


As The World Falls Down

by Jen_Kollic



Series: After the Mushroom War [2]
Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen_Kollic/pseuds/Jen_Kollic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, Simon and Marcy seemed to be the only people left on Earth after the horrors of the Mushroom War. But with Simon lost to the madness of the crown, Marceline is left to make her own way in the postapocalyptic landscape that will eventually become the land of Ooo. There are other things out there however, like a strange girl who calls herself 'Princess Bubblegum'...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maybe

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Adventure Time belongs to Pendleton Ward/Cartoon Network.
> 
> A/N: Thanks to Rinney and Anna for proof-reading! This follows on from '996 Years Ago', but takes place a few years later. Will (eventually) be Marceline/Bubblegum.

 

**As The World Falls Down**

**Chapter 1 - Maybe**

_Maybe you'll think of me_  
 _When you are all alone_  
 _Maybe the one who is waiting for you_  
 _Will prove untrue_  
 _Then what will you do?_  
\- The Ink Spots: 'Maybe'

 

"I really don't like this Marcy," Simon whispered to her as the two of them crouched in the ruined storefront. They'd come back to the city to look for supplies that they couldn't find in the wilderness like antiseptic and bandages. Now that she was older, faster and more agile than Simon these days and able to outrun mutants, he'd let her come with him. But the only mutants they'd seen were the ones scattered lifelessly across the square in front of them, torn open like empty cans. The green goo that had seeped from the orifices on their bodies was completely gone, as if whatever had attacked them had taken it... or eaten it.

"But the pharmacy is right over there," Marcy whispered back, pointing at a lopsided green cross hanging in the shattered window of one of the shops on the other side of the square. "Maybe whatever did this is gone... at least this means no mutants, right?"

Simon mentally chewed that over for a few moments, one finger absently circling the large gem on the crown. They needed antiseptic, cuts and gashes were an occupational hazard when scavenging, and with no doctors or hospitals an infected wound could be a death sentence. Not for himself maybe, the crown's magic would protect him from something as mundane as sepsis, but it wouldn't protect Marcy. Maybe they'd even have antibiotics or painkillers in there.

Sighing, he looked down at Marcy as he made up his mind. "I'll go. You stay here and hide in case something appears."

"But Simon," the girl protested. "I'm a better runner, I should go!"

"No," he replied firmly. "If the thing that killed those mutants is about I can fight it with the crown, and you have to run. Promise me you'll run."

"You promised me you wouldn't wear it!" Marcy hissed, half angry and half scared.

Simon sighed again, looking away from the girl's accusing stare. "I know Marcy, but I know I can save us with it. We don't know if you're faster than whatever did this, and we're not taking that chance. Besides," he added, looking back at her. "I'm older, so it should be me taking the risk. If I get eaten, I'll freeze its stomach on the way down."

Marceline couldn't help a small smile at that, though her eyes were worried. "You're so silly, Simon."

He smiled back at her, shifting the pack on his back slightly. "Now get yourself hidden. If we get separated, I'll meet you back at the camp, okay?"

"Be careful Simon," she replied, crouching down behind the ruined wall and staying perfectly still. He didn't respond, but patted her head lightly then carefully crept out into the ruined square, moving slowly and cautiously.

Nothing stirred except faint puffs of ash that Simon's feet kicked up no matter how carefully he stepped. It was nearly ten years since the bombs had dropped, and the cities were still coated in ashes from the fires that had burned them out. He stepped over a dead mutant, nerves on edge in case it was a trap, but it didn't move. He paused to take a closer look, wondering if this thing had ever been human or if it was purely a product of the bombs. Apart from the humanoid shape, there was nothing else about it to suggest that it had been a person.

It looked like it had been torn apart by vicious claws that had hooked into the orifices on its chest and pulled it apart, inside it seemed to be hollow without a trace of the green fluid that normally spilled out of them. Warily, Simon poked at one of its motionless limbs with the toe of his boot, and it cracked and crumbled like eggshells. Shuddering, he quickly moved on towards the pharmacy.

The door was still on its hinges, but the lock had been smashed, whether from the bomb blast or looters Simon didn't know. There hadn't been many of the latter; most survivors had gone for grocery stores first before succumbing to radiation sickness. He still didn't know how Marceline had survived that, how she was still perfectly fine in an irradiated wasteland, but he didn't question it. Marceline had told him her father was a demon, which sounded insane, but then again Simon owned a magic crown which talked to him so he didn't really have room to judge.

At first it looked like the shelves were empty, but that wasn't unusual. Given the force of the blasts and the earth tremors that had followed, it was more unusual to find things where they'd been left before the war. Crouching down, Simon carefully shifted some of the rubble, mostly fallen ceiling tiles and plaster, looking for anything that resembled medical supplies. Finding a plastic bottle, he wiped one thumb across the dusty label to reveal the name 'Tylenol', and slipped it into a pocket. He was about to lift another tile when he heard a gargling shriek.

Outside in the square, a mutant flew from a side street to land in the centre of the plaza, bouncing and skidding to a halt. Simon froze in place, unconsciously holding his breath as it got back to its feet. The creatures had no faces so it was impossible to guess their mood, but from the way it started to rapidly shuffle away it was plain that something had attacked it. And that it was frightened.

"Oh mother, mother, mother…" Simon muttered under his breath, hoping Marceline would keep hidden. If whatever had attacked the mutant came after it, hopefully it would be too distracted to notice them.

The mutant had barely taken three steps when the dark figure swooped down on it like a bird of prey, tattered robes trailing from its thin arms like wings. It took a moment for Simon to realise that the arms weren't just thin, they were skeletal. Ragged, leathery flesh hung off its forearms to expose bones which looked like they were only barely held together by a few remaining tendons.

The strength of those arms belied their fragile appearance as bony fingers sank into one of the oozing holes in the mutant's flesh and pulled. Simon watched in silent horror as the skeleton creature tore the mutant in half like an over-ripe melon and thrust its head forward to gulp down the green slime that had filled its body cavity. The mutant kept struggling and moaning until the last glowing drop had been drained from it, and Simon felt his stomach heave in nausea. Fighting down the urge to vomit, he slowly crept over to the broken window, trying to catch sight of Marcy, hoping she wouldn't move.

The girl was still crouched in the rubble where he'd left her, watching the creature with horrified fascination. She hadn't made a sound or shifted from her position despite what she'd seen, and Simon felt a surge of paternal pride despite their dire situation. As if she'd sensed his gaze, she looked towards him, her eyes wide and frightened, and he gestured to keep hidden, hoping that this... this thing would go off in search of more mutants to hunt. It was already getting back to its feet.

Throwing the mutant's drained husk aside with contemptuous ease, the creature stretched to its full height. It was massive, towering at least eight feet from the ground and crowned with a set of curling horns that added an extra foot to its height. It was hard to tell through the voluminous robes it wore, but it looked humanoid, its arms certainly had a human bone structure, with the exception of the vicious claws it had instead of fingertips.

The horned head swung from side to side as it appeared to scent the air like a wolf, and Simon saw the glint of bone at its jaw as well. He was reminded of a book of religious medieval woodcuts that he'd possessed in his former life, the creature in front of him only needed a scythe to be the Grim Reaper that had featured in the images.

 _'Just go away,'_ he thought desperately. _'Go away and leave us alone whatever you are. We are never coming back here if we get out of this...'_

Marceline never made a sound, never moved a muscle, but to Simon's horror the creature's head snapped directly towards her as if it had sensed her presence, and began to drift over to where she was hidden, somehow levitating instead of walking. Simon's reaction was instinctive.

"Hey! You!" The creature halted as Simon sprung up from his hiding place and hurled a piece of plaster at it, which bounced off its back harmlessly. "Come get me you abomination!"

The creature didn't seem to turn, its head simply swivelled a hundred and eighty degrees to glare at him while its arms were still stretched out towards where Marcy was hidden. The skin of its face flapped gently from the movement as if it was only loosely attached, and around the mouth it had been torn away to reveal its jawbone and jagged teeth. But the eyes were the worst, the empty black sockets of a skull in which lurid green fire danced with malign intelligence.

Simon felt his limbs freeze beneath the creature's gaze, seeing its jaw moving spasmodically as if it was speaking. There was an odd buzzing in his ears, like a faint, badly-tuned radio, but it sounded almost like words. The green flames in the creature's eye sockets narrowed to sparks, and then its gaze moved downwards and to the side, fixing on the crown at Simon's belt. For a few seconds it stared at it, almost as if it recognised it, then with a disdainful snort its head snapped back round towards Marceline as it swept down towards her.

The girl screamed as the creature hauled her out from her hiding place by her hair, struggling madly and kicking at it. Without even thinking about it, Simon snapped the crown from his belt and placed it on his head, and the world lit up with the beauty of sparkling frost as the power of winter surged through him, raising him into the air as his hair and beard grew as long as a midwinter night.

"Let her go!" He aimed a blast of icy wind at the creature, struggling to focus on what he was doing. He had to save Marceline _no no no he had to bathe the world in ice and snow and dance in the drifting flakes forget the girl forget her forget her._ Gritting his teeth and blocking out the crown's voice, he kept its power focused on the creature. Which appeared completely indifferent as frost rimed its robes and bones. It made a fist with its free hand, which burst into toxic green flame, and with a scornful flick of its wrist it batted Simon away with as much ease as it had thrown the dead mutant earlier.

Hitting the wall of the pharmacy hard, Simon slid down to the pavement, dazed. Shaking his head, he blasted himself back into the air, about to bodyslam into the creature in the hope that it would drop Marcy. It hadn't even shifted its gaze from the girl, lifting her high into the air with one hand and drawing the other back…

 _…_ _then everything seemed to blur like a time-lapse recording. Simon blinked, and the creature's claws slashed forwards to open Marceline's throat with a spray of scarlet as her struggles ended with a gurgle. He blinked again, and her lifeless body lay in a pool of blood at the creature's feet. He opened his mouth to scream, his eyes filling with tears but as the first ones trickled from his eyes they froze solid._

 _'_ _That's what will happen,' the crown said, matter-of-factly. Simon could feel its presence clearly, coiling around him like a lover. 'But not yet.'_

_Simon blinked again, and the horrific vision rewound itself. Marceline was back in the creature's grasp, still struggling, but its claws were starting to swing towards her. This time however, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion._

_"_ _TELL ME HOW TO STOP IT!" he screamed as the chill power of the crown pressed against him, its cool breath breezing past his ear._

 _'_ _Oh, that's easy,' it purred seductively. 'Just give yourself to me, and together we can save her…'_

_Inch by inch the hooked talons fell towards Marceline's throat and Simon knew he had no choice. Frozen tears fell from his eyes like crystals as he made a silent plea for forgiveness to whatever deity might be listening, and to Marceline herself. "Do it then," he whispered. "Save her." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he was no longer Simon Petrikov._

Marceline struggled and kicked desperately in the monster's grasp, her breath coming in rapid, terrified gasps as she tried to free herself. It was no use; the cold skeletal fingers held her tightly, burning eyes staring into hers as she smelled the charnel-house reek of its breath. She didn't even notice that Simon had put the crown on, barely feeling the cold rush of winter wind as it buffeted the creature. One of its hands ignited with sickly green fire and as it drew it back and flexed its claws she knew it was going to kill her.

Then, with a crash and shatter of bone, a javelin of solid ice took the arm the creature was holding her with off at the shoulder, and she fell to the ground with a thud.

"STOP TOUCHING MY THINGS!" Simon's voice was barely recognisable, a crazed, cracked shriek. Marceline looked up to see him hovering in the air with the crown on his head as snow whipped around him in a frosty corona. The creature's severed arm flopped and flailed on the ground like a landed fish as Marceline pushed herself backwards on her hands and knees, but the skeletal monster seemed to have forgotten her. It picked up its arm from the ground and reattached it, seemingly with ease, but then was blasted with hailstones the size of marbles.

"I AM THE KING OF ICE AND SNOW, AND I COMMAND YOU TO GET LOST!" Simon was still raining the unfettered power of the crown down upon the creature, layering it in a thick rime of ice as it raised flaming hands above its head and hurled a green fireball at him. The whirling snow extinguished it harmlessly as Simon laughed madly, jagged teeth glinting as he continued to cover the creature with ice. Before it could be completely encased, its monstrous form dissolved into shadow, spilling out of a gap in the ice like smoke and reforming a short distance away.

This time it didn't renew its attack, and simply watched Simon instead, who was still laughing as the snow whirling around him became jagged hail. Then Marceline realised that it wasn't looking at him at all, its gaze was fixed on the crown. Its head snapped round to look at her and although the missing skin on its face gave it a permanent skeleton grin, she could have sworn the edges of the tattered flesh tugged upwards in a smile. What it did next confused her completely – it levitated into the air and moved away, disappearing into the street it had originally emerged from without further ado, leaving her with Simon.

"Yes! Run from me!" Simon snarled, even though the creature's retreat could hardly be called a run. "Run from the Ice King!" He threw back his head and laughed as his glasses went flying, the hailstorm spreading out around him as he twirled in the air in some kind of maddened dance. Diving back around the wall she'd been hiding behind earlier as she was pelted with hail, Marceline scrabbled desperately in the rubble until she found a fist-sized chunk of concrete, and hurled it directly at the crown perched on Simon's head.

She was a good shot, and it hit the crown with a clang of metal, knocking it off Simon's head to land a few feet away, rolling gently in a patch of snow. But for the first time, knocking it off did nothing, the snow didn't stop and Simon didn't fall, though he did give an irritated yell.

"Gunther! Stop interfering with my victory dance!" Simon snapped, his voice still scratchy and harsh, not like Simon's at all. Landing beside the crown, he picked it up, dusted it off, and put it back on. His appearance hadn't changed at all, his hair and beard still reaching almost to his knees, his glasses forgotten. Running forwards, Marceline grabbed his arm and tugged at it desperately.

"Simon! Come back! It's gone now, you don't need the crown. Come back," she begged, clinging to him as she stared into his eyes and willed him to remember.

"Who?" he asked with a frown. "You're talking crazy Gunther. Stop it and go build a snowman to commemorate my glorious victory. Hey!"

Marceline had thrown herself at him, hugging him tightly in the hope that it might snap him out of it. "You're Simon Petrikov!" she half-shouted. "You used to study old things before the war and you had a fiancée called Betty and I'm Marceline, not Gunther!"

"Only thing getting old here is you, Gunther." Simon shoved her away roughly, but Marceline sprang at him and swatted the crown away once more, this time trying to pull him back as he reached for it.

"No!" Marceline's voice was almost a scream. "Leave it alone, you need to remember, you need to…" Before she could finish, he pushed her away with one arm and brought the other around to deliver a stinging, backhanded slap to her face which knocked her to the ground.

"Knock it off; you're really starting to get on my nerves." Simon growled as he retrieved the crown and put it back on.

Marceline didn't reply or get up, one hand clasped to her cheek numbly. Simon had never, never struck her. And when he looked back at her with the dispassionate eyes of a stranger, she knew he was gone.

The man that had been Simon recoiled slightly as the shaking girl pulled her arms around herself with a heartbroken wail, tears welling in her eyes. He looked down at her as she sobbed, not showing the slightest glimmer of compassion, only embarrassment at the scene she was making. "Gunther, stop that noise right now!" he ordered sharply. "Stop it!" Folding his arms in annoyance as she ignored him, he gave a frustrated sigh. "Fine then. I'm out of here. Come find me when you're not a whiny little baby any more." Turning his back on her, he launched himself into the sky and headed north to the siren song of the frozen mountains, leaving Marceline alone in the ruined city.

She was eleven.


	2. There Will Come Soft Rains

_"_ _And not one will know of the war, not one  
Will care at last when it is done._

_Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,_   
_If mankind perished utterly"_   
\- Sara Teasdale: "There Will Come Soft Rains"

The sun was going down when Marceline finally reached her destination, cresting a grassy hill to see the hollow willow ahead of her. She almost let herself slump to the ground then and there, but it would be dark soon and she'd need to set up camp, so she forced herself to keep going.

"Not long now buddy," she said to the stuffed toy hanging out from the canvas messenger bag she was carrying. "Let's just hope nothing else has moved in…" Hambo didn't reply of course, but that had never stopped Marceline from talking to him, even if her own voice was the only one she'd heard in the three years since Simon had abandoned her in the ruined city.

She'd almost been expecting the monstrous creature to come back for her as she'd knelt there, sobbing in the dust. She probably wouldn't even have put up much of a fight if it had. But the minutes had turned to hours and neither it nor Simon had returned. Eventually Marceline had made her way back to where they had camped, in the ruins of what had once been a gas station on a hill on the outskirts of the city, and had curled up in her sleeping bag with Hambo clutched tightly against her chest.

That night every small sound had snapped her out of her sleep and left her lying awake for what had felt like hours while the night passed. Without Simon there she had felt lost and vulnerable, hazy memories of crawling through smoking ruins beneath a glowing green sky flooding through her mind. But eventually she'd slept, and she'd woken in the watery light of dawn to find… nothing. It hadn't been a dream. Simon was gone, like the father she could barely remember, only Simon had been more of a father to her than he ever had.

Marceline had waited at the campsite for days, hoping that Simon would come back once he'd shaken off the effects of the crown. Even though she'd known deep down that he was gone when she'd looked in his eyes after he'd slapped her, she still couldn't help hoping that she was wrong. She didn't go back into the city in case the monster was still around, and one night she saw flashes of lurid green light from the streets below. She'd put out the campfire after that, and ended up eating blocks of ramen raw, until those ran out. After that she went hungry until she finally accepted that there was no use waiting. If Simon came back, he would find her, and that was when she'd remembered the hollow tree.

Making one last trip into the city to get some supplies, keeping far, far away from the plaza where the monster had been, Marceline had set off to retrace their steps back to the tree. She didn't have a map, that had been in Simon's pack and he'd taken that with him when he left, but she was sure she'd remember the landmarks. He'd always told her to learn landmarks so she wouldn't get lost and shown her how to find north by looking at the trees and stars, so how hard could it be?

 _"_ _How do you know all this stuff?" Marcy asked curiously, perched on a log as she watched Simon start a fire._

 _"_ _Well, I used to be an Eagle Scout long, long ago," he explained. "And this kind of thing came in handy when I was on expeditions looking for artefacts; it wasn't always as simple as poking around dusty old tombs…"_

Simon and Marceline had wandered for four years after leaving the tree, scavenging in ruined towns and cities but never staying in one place for more than a few months. Eventually mutants would find them and rather than use the power of the crown to drive them away, they had run instead. Simon had kept his promise not to use it right up until he'd saved her from the monster.

It only took Marceline three years to find her way back to the open grasslands where the tree stood, but that was because she never stayed in one place for more than a couple of nights, going into ruins only to scavenge what food and supplies she could in a single day and sleeping for five or six hours a night. Marceline only carried a bedroll and what could fit in her bag, which was heavy enough as it was. Some days she went hungry, some nights she didn't sleep at all, and she never stopped to rest until she was ready to drop. So by the time she headed wearily down the hillside towards the willow she was no longer the little girl who'd left it, she was a scrawny, wiry fourteen year-old with an unkempt mane of black hair that reached halfway down her back.

The old blanket was still hanging in front of the hole which led inside the tree where Simon had left it years ago. It was more ragged and faded than Marceline remembered, but the tree on the other hand seemed to be doing fine and had grown at least another ten or fifteen feet since she had last seen it. It had branched off in another couple of places, and all the leaves that the power of the crown had withered had been replaced by healthy growth.

Marceline circled it cautiously, listening for any sound of movement, but the only thing she noticed were a few dead branches. They were exactly where the tree had lost its leaves completely; Simon must have been right when he'd said the crown's power would kill it if they stayed.

_"You should remember where this place is, okay?" Simon had said just before they left. "It would be a good place to stay and if I'm ever gone..."_

Pushing that memory away, Marceline went back to the entrance and slowly pushed the blanket aside, moving behind it to let the fading sunlight in so she could see if anything was in there. But the hollow chamber inside was completely empty, there was no sign that anyone had been inside since she and Simon had left.

Still not letting her guard down, since healthy paranoia had saved her life more than once, Marceline crept carefully inside, her eyes darting downwards and upwards as well as side to side. Catching movement out of the corner of one eye, her head snapped towards it, but all that was there was a spider scurrying across its web as the breeze from outside shook it gently. Marceline had no fear of spiders, or insects in general, or pretty much anything that wasn't trying to kill her, so she left it alone.

"Well, it looks like no-one else ever found this place Hambo," she told the toy , patting his battered head. Sometimes she wondered how childish it was to still be carrying him with her and talking to him, but then again, it wasn't like there was anyone around to judge. "Maybe because there's no-one else left to find it." She tried to laugh at that, but the sound turned into a sigh. Marceline hadn't seen another person since Simon had left, and even the mutants seemed to be getting fewer.

Over where she'd originally fallen through the hole between the branches the makeshift stone hearth was still in place, though covered in dust now and Marceline went over to sit beside it, running thin fingers through the grime.

 _"_ _Fire safety is very important Marcy," Simon told her, his voice serious as he set the stones in place. "Especially if we're inside… and even more especially if we're in a tree. We don't want to wake up to find the place on fire now, do we?"_

Setting her bag down and shrugging off the bedroll hanging over one shoulder, Marceline checked her supplies, starting with her most important possessions. Hambo of course, in need of repair if she ever found more thread but thankfully still possessing both eyes. Simon's glasses, which he'd need if he came back. Her journal and a stubby pencil. The penknife Simon had found with the chicken soup. A firesteel. A dented tin mug and saucepan. A chipped but still very sharp hatchet. A change of clothes, though the pants and t-shirt were just as patched and worn as the ones she was wearing. Maybe she'd be able to scavenge some clothing from the nearest town or city.

She had a few other supplies as well, a metal flask, a whetstone, some rope and a spool of fine wire that she'd mistaken for thread. No flashlight, but she didn't need one, she could see just fine in the dark. Marceline guessed that came from her father like her grey skin and pointed ears. Her memories of him were hazy at best, but she remembered big, big eyes, blue-grey skin and sharp teeth.

Sometimes she wondered what had happened to him, if he had died when the bombs fell like her mother, but she also had vague memories of seeing him step through a wall after drawing a face on it. On days when she felt slightly more charitable towards him she wondered if he'd ever find her, but most days she doubted that he was even looking. He was supposed to be a demon after all; if he'd really wanted to find her then surely he would have done so by now. Shaking those thoughts away with an irritable grunt, Marceline got back to her feet and moved around the hollow chamber to take a proper look at it and to make sure there definitely wasn't anything poisonous lurking in the corners.

Feeling a draft across the back of her neck, Marceline's gaze shot upwards as she instinctively sank into a defensive crouch. Above her, where the main trunk split in half, she could see a dimly-lit oval gap in one side of the wooden ceiling. She'd thought the upper part of the tree was solid, but then again, if that was the case it would probably have toppled over by now. Raking through her bag for the rope, she coiled it around her shoulders and pulled her bedroll over to below the hole. Setting it on its side, she used it to boost her height and jumped for the gap. It took her a couple of attempts, and several bruises and splinters, until she finally managed to grab the lip of the opening and pulled herself upwards through it.

The chamber she found herself in was much smaller than the one below, and looked like it had formed from a natural split in the wood that had grown larger in size as the tree grew. The walls were curving, giving it an arched ceiling and gently sloping floor, but it seemed solid enough below Marceline's feet. A knot in the tree trunk had split into a long, narrow gap which let in light but was too small for anything larger than a squirrel to get through.

It wasn't nearly as big as the lower chamber, but still large enough to fit Marceline's bedroll beneath one of the walls and while the floor sloped, it wasn't steep enough to roll her out of the gap in the floor while she slept. Knotting the rope at one end, she shoved it through the widest part of the gap in the trunk then worked the rope downwards to where it narrowed. The knot could no longer fit through the gap, securing the rope in place as Marceline tugged on it experimentally. It would do for now, hopefully she'd be able to scavenge some tools to fix it in place properly.

Sliding down the rope, Marceline grabbed the bedroll by one of its straps and climbed back up, but had a lot more difficulty pushing it through the hole in the ceiling than she'd had getting through it herself. Eventually she had to unroll it and awkwardly feed it through with one arm while she clung to the rope with the other. At least that meant that anything bigger than she was would have trouble getting in.

Retrieving Hambo and her journal, she carried those up to the small chamber as well, then pushed her bedroll beneath one of the walls and pulled the rope up behind her. Slumping down onto the bedroll with a sigh, she put her back to the wall so that she was looking out of the narrow window and clasped Hambo to her chest.

"What do you think, Hambo?" she asked him. "Feels safer up here than it does down there, huh?" Although the toy didn't reply, Marceline nodded as if it had and sat up. "Yeah, I should still set a tripwire or two. Can't be too careful."

Climbing back down into the larger chamber, Marceline went outside to collect a handful of pebbles then unspooled a length of wire long enough to stretch across the main entrance with slack to spare. Taking an old nail from her bag, she hammered it crudely into one side of the entrance using the butt of the axe, about half a foot from the ground. Winding one end of the wire around it securely, Marceline wrapped the other end around the handle of the saucepan, which she filled with the pebbles she'd gathered and some old coins she'd found in ruins. She balanced it delicately on the upturned tin cup on the other side of the entrance, tapping it a couple of times to make sure it would topple easily if something tried to get in and tripped on the wire. The noise it would make when tipped over was sure to wake her, but as an extra precaution she took her bag up into the upper chamber with her.

"There," she said to Hambo as she pulled herself through the gap, remembering to pull the rope up behind her. "If anything is around and tries to get in here they should knock that over and wake me up. Then they get the axe!" Marceline brandished the hatchet in mock-menace, though she'd never actually had to use it on anything except firewood. She put it beside her bedroll all the same then crawled under the blanket with Hambo, too tired to care about being hungry.

"Wonder if anything will show up," she mumbled drowsily to the toy as she drifted to sleep. "Would be a first…"


	3. No Lullaby

_Keep your eyes open and prick up your ears_  
 _Rehearse your loudest cry._  
 _There's folk out there who would do you harm_  
 _So I'll sing you no lullaby._  
\- Jethro Tull: 'No Lullaby'

Dawn the next morning was bright and clear, a huge difference from the thick ashen clouds that still hung over the cities. When Marceline woke up, with a start as always, she could actually see blue sky through the gap in the tree trunk. Cautiously poking her head through the hole in the floor, she saw that her tripwire trap was undisturbed and the blanket was still in place over the entrance. The only things she could hear were the rustle of the tree's leaves and birds chirping, which was a welcome change to the dead silence of the ruined cities.

Grabbing her bag and journal, Marceline lowered the rope and climbed down, feeling far more confident after an uninterrupted night's sleep. She had some cans of spaghetti and a pack of dried ramen that she'd found on her last scavenging trip and she remembered that there were fish in the pond by the tree, so first she'd need firewood and also water since her flask was only a quarter full. Although she knew she could get water from the pond, Simon had told her that running water was better to drink, though either way she should boil it first.

Sitting cross-legged by the hearth, Marceline opened her journal and flipped to the back pages, which were full of sets of tally marks. Since neither she nor Simon had known the date when he'd found her, Simon had lost track in the chaos following the bombs and Marceline had been too young to know, these were her only way of marking the passage of time.

The journal itself was a large, leather-bound book which Simon had found and given to her not long after he'd taught her to read and write. She'd been about six then, neither of them had known her exact age since all she'd been able to tell him when he'd found her was that she was three. But Simon had shown her the notebook that he used to keep track of the days and explained that he made a vertical line for each day then scored through it on the fifth day because groups of five were easier to count, and three hundred and sixty five meant a year, which he marked with a star.

Marceline had started doing the same when he'd given her the journal, the first dozen or so sets clumsy and crooked but gradually growing neater as her hand had gotten steadier. She had marked the day Simon had left with an X, which had saddened her as the line of tally marks after it grew longer and longer, but now that she'd had to turn the page she no longer had to look at it.

She wondered what would happen when she ran out of pages, would she be able to find another? Her tally marks started on the inside of the back cover and were now halfway down the page in front, and her entries were nearly a third of the way through from the front. She didn't write in it often these days, most of her entries simply notes on what she'd managed to scavenge or a rough location of somewhere she wanted to go back to. The earlier ones were longer, partly because of the large, childish lettering, but mostly because Simon had encouraged her to write in it so she wouldn't forget how.

Flipping through the pages until she found the entry she was looking for, written in crude, blocky print, Marceline felt something twist painfully inside her as she read it.

_Dear Journal_

_Today we found a big tree and I fell in to it because it was all empty inside. Simon said it was a willo tree and it is very old. Then we cot some fish in the pond and made a fire in the tree which Simon said was funny. I like the tree._

Sighing heavily, Marceline looked towards the place where Simon had slept, although she wouldn't have remembered it the wood of the tree had discoloured there to a duller brown. Shaking off the memory, she turned to the front of the journal instead and was immediately plunged back into melancholy nostalgia.

The first dozen or so pages of the journal had been written in by Simon, but they weren't diary entries. He had filled it with as much woodcraft information as he could remember, like drawings of tree leaves and whether the parent tree grew fruit or how good they were for firewood. Lists of plants that could be eaten and ones that were poisonous and should be avoided. How to start a fire. How to make a snare.

It could almost have passed for a scouting guide if not for the last part, drawings of store signs and logos from before the war and descriptions of what they sold so she'd know what to look for and where. It had been invaluable after Simon had left; Marceline didn't remember much about the world before the bombs and would never have known something like that. She still had trouble imagining what the world had been like then, being able to get anything you needed by going into a store and giving the people there bits of paper and metal.

Snapping the book closed, Marceline slid it back into her bag, along with the hatchet and the flask, and then stood up. Sitting around wondering about the old world would hardly get her firewood after all. Going over to the entrance she carefully stepped over the tripwire and pushed through the blanket into the sunlight. Since she didn't think the tree would appreciate her hacking off its branches for firewood, it looked like she would be having a long walk before breakfast…

o.o.o.o.o

Nearly two hours later, Marceline was eating a soggy slurry of ramen, which still beat eating it raw, while a second saucepan of water boiled over the fire. She hadn't found a river or stream, but she had found a small copse of apple and cherry trees. They had been bare of fruit, but one had toppled over at some point and was dead and dry, a half-hour's work with the hatchet had got her a decent supply of wood though she was limited to taking only as much as she could carry.

If she remembered rightly there was a ruined city nearby, the one Simon had taken her into to look for chicken soup. Granted, it had been full of mutants last time, but that had been seven years ago and now Marceline was stronger, faster and had an axe. Even if it was only a small one.

They'd found the tree about three weeks after leaving the city, but she remembered that they'd still been slowly circling around it without going into it. Simon had never wanted to go too far from somewhere they could scavenge, since medical supplies didn't exactly grow on trees in the wilderness. On a sudden whim, she gulped down the last of the ramen and ran outside, then over to the place where she'd first started climbing the tree all those years ago.

It had been easy to scale the tree's rough, gnarled bark then, and it was even easier now. Pausing only to kick her battered plimsolls off, Marceline shot up the trunk like a squirrel, startling some birds that were nesting in one of the branches. Swiftly making her way up the main trunk, she climbed as high as she could before the branches grew too thin and whippy to support her weight and then found a secure foothold. Taking hold of a sturdy branch with one hand, she slowly leaned out to push the tree's thick foliage aside with the other. From the tree's great height she could see much further, but all she could see on this side were rolling fields disappearing into the distance where mountain peaks jutted up towards the sky. Not that way then.

The cascading leaves of the willow made it difficult to see a lot of the surrounding landscape, so she shifted her position about ninety degrees and looked out again. This time Marceline could see part of a grey smudge lurking behind the hills, and as she moved round further she could make out a couple of tall buildings. It looked to be a few hours walk at least since she'd have to climb the hills, but if she left early the next morning she could be there and back in a day. Taking a pebble out of her pocket she dropped it to the ground, then climbed back down the way she'd come up. Marceline knew that when she reached the ground she would be facing a different direction, so she walked around the tree until she found the pebble, then marked an arrow pointing away from the tree from where it had fallen in the dirt. That was the way she'd need to travel.

Going back inside, Marceline took out her journal and turned to the page of store logos and signs to remind herself of what to look for. A mortar and pestle or RX sign meant a pharmacy, which was easy enough to remember, but what she really wanted was something called Target or Kmart or Walmart, the description said they'd be in big, big buildings and they'd have… everything. Food, tools, clothes, medical supplies, if she could find one then she'd pretty much be set for at least a year. According to Simon's notes they would be near a main road, with a big car park in front, so if she followed the highway maybe she'd get lucky. She could always hope.

o.o.o.o.o

Marceline set out early the next morning, her bag nearly empty. She needed the room for supplies, so she'd left everything except her journal, the water flask and the penknife. The hatchet was tucked securely into the loose waistband of her ragged jeans and rather than weigh herself down with food she'd eaten one of the cans of spaghetti for breakfast. And if she didn't find anything on her scavenging run, well, it wouldn't be her first time going without food for a day. What she really needed was something on wheels she could push or pull behind her, that would mean she'd be able to carry more supplies and firewood, being limited to taking only what she could carry made things much more difficult.

The walk took nearly three hours, but as she crested the last hill Marceline could see the ruined city spread out below. She couldn't see very far into it though, broken buildings blocked her view, as did the thick, dusty haze that seemed to hang over all of the places where the bombs had hit. She could see the main highway that led into the city though, and decided to follow that in the hope that it would lead to a shopping district. Also it would make it hard for mutants to sneak up on her, since the main roads were a relatively open space compared to the streets; the only thing she'd need to watch out for would be abandoned vehicles that they could be hiding in.

An hour later, Marceline was crossing an overpass as she neared the city centre, slightly unnerved by the complete lack of mutants so far. Her bag was a heavy weight now, as she'd entered the city she'd found an old grocery store which still had some cans on the shelves. Some of them had been rusted or bulging so she'd left them alone, but she'd found a dozen that looked undamaged. She wouldn't know if they were still okay to eat until she opened them, and in the case of a couple which had lost their labels she wouldn't even know what they were until they were open, but she wasn't about to pass them up. She'd also found a bag of dry rice that was still sealed which meant it should be good, but Marceline did wish that it weighed less. That was why she always took ramen whenever possible, at least it was light.

Shifting the bag strap uncomfortably, Marceline paused as she made her way along the overpass and scanned the roads and streets below for any sign of mutants. Here and there she'd found what looked like fragments of faded green eggshell which had reminded her of the dead mutants in the other city, and that thought made her shudder and reach for the hatchet for reassurance.

Then again, if that... thing... from the other city was here somewhere, Marceline doubted that the axe would be enough to save her.

But the ruined city was silent and still, the only sounds Marceline could hear was the shift of broken concrete beneath her feet and an occasional creak from the ruined buildings and cars as they shifted slightly in the wind. Taking a deep breath she pressed on, determined to keep following the highway until she found a big store. Then she might find something to carry more supplies in, and that meant she wouldn't have to come back here for a while.

Marceline slowly trudged along the roadside for at least another hour; it was difficult for her to keep track of time when she couldn't see the sun through the overcast city sky. As she walked, she noticed that up ahead the buildings seemed to stop on one side, and hurried her pace in case it was a store car park. To her disappointment, as she got closer she saw trees and shrubs, the space must have been a park at some point. Since her shoulder was starting to throb from the weight of her bag, Marceline decided to take a rest for now; she could follow the road later.

The park was bigger than she'd first thought, Marceline couldn't make out the buildings on the other side. Once it must have been a neat, ordered place of smooth grass lawns and tree-lined avenues, but both grass and trees had grown wild, the former reaching her knees in places, the latter wild and unkempt with smaller saplings springing up around them.

Setting her bag down on an old bench gratefully, Marceline went to investigate the trees. Unfortunately they looked like birches, so no chance of fruit or nuts and the wood burned too fast to make a good fire. She followed the avenue they lined anyway in the hope of finding other plants, watching her step on the uneven octagonal paving stones.

Then she heard something that she hadn't expected, something she'd only heard once or twice before. The distant hiss and splash of falling water. Simon had told her that the cities had once had running water in every home, and she had dim, vague memories of splashing in a tub while her mother laughed. Maybe some of the water mains were still running, and maybe one had broken. Marceline thought about going back to get her flask since it was half empty, but the water in it was boiled and safe to drink while whatever water was here might not be. She decided to investigate anyway, if she found an old bottle or something she could fill that.

Following the pathway cautiously, Marceline found that it led deeper into the park, and soon she was surrounded by the overgrown trees. The sound of the water grew louder the further she went and then as she rounded a corner she saw the source. The pathway opened up into a large circular plaza paved with the same octagonal stones, more benches set around the perimeter. And in the centre was a huge pool with a strange stone structure in the middle with a jet of water spraying from the top.

Marceline had never seen a fountain before, so for the first few moments she simply stared at it. It was shaped like a long-stemmed shallow bowl, with a smaller bowl atop it from which the water sprayed, then fell into the main bowl. From there it cascaded from notches in the lip of bowl into the main pool below, where water lilies and other aquatic plants were growing. Marceline approached it slowly, still trying to make sense of what she was seeing. It was so… pretty.

Reaching the lip of the pool, which reached almost to her waist, Marceline started as she saw movement, then relaxed as she realised it was only a small frog that had been frightened by her approach. She watched it hop across the lily pads before disappearing into the water with a splash. She could see other things moving in there as well, what looked like huge, bright orange fish, and wondered how easy they'd be to catch. Then she jumped again as she heard another unfamiliar noise, the sound of a delighted girlish giggle.

Taking a few steps back, Marceline began to edge around the pool carefully, her hand dropping to the hatchet in her waistband. She reminded herself that mutants didn't giggle, the only sounds they made were inarticulate moans and groans, but then again, what if this was a new kind? As she listened she realised that she could hear other noises as well, what sounded like tiny, high-pitched voices chattering words she couldn't make out, it was hard to hear them over the rush of water from the fountain.

Marceline was so distracted by trying to decipher the strange sounds that she didn't notice the empty can until she stood on it, crushing it with a crackle of metal. She froze, but it was too late, the giggling stopped and then she saw something bright pink rise up from behind the lip of the pool. It turned towards her and she realised she was looking at another person, not a mutant at all. A very pink girl, who looked about her own age, wearing an extremely impractical-looking dress and a golden crown. Even her eyes were a deep shade of magenta.

The strange girl looked at Marceline curiously, carrying small figures in her arms that looked like tiny, brightly-coloured humanoids. For a moment Marceline thought they were dolls like Hambo, until she realised all of them were looking right at her, then one of them pointed at her and chattered something in its jabbering, high-pitched voice. Then the girl smiled, and Marceline reacted the only way she knew how.

Baring her fangs, Marceline hissed at her, then turned on her heel and sprinted away as fast as she could.


	4. Brave New World

_Take a look around you at the world we've come to know_  
 _Does it seem to be much more than a crazy circus show?_  
 _But maybe from the madness something beautiful will grow_  
\- Jeff Wayne: "Brave New World"

Marceline was awakened by a hard, curved edge pressing into her cheek, and opened her eyes with a groan. She was lying on the floor by the hearth in the hollow tree, using her bag as an extremely uncomfortable pillow. One of the cans inside it was digging into her face, and when she raised her head and rubbed her eyes she could feel the sunken channel it had gouged into her cheek.

With another groan, she stretched slowly and painfully, her body cold and aching after the night spent on the hard floor. After she'd ran from the strange girl, Marceline had paused only to pick up her bag and sling it over her shoulder, then she had run or jogged for most of the way home, zigzagging through the hills to make her trail difficult to follow.

By the time she'd reached the tree she was staggering from exhaustion and all she'd done was set the tripwire trap and drink most of the boiled water in the saucepan over the cold hearth. Then she'd simply collapsed onto the floor and fallen asleep, too tired to either start a fire or climb up to her bedroll. She was definitely regretting it now.

Getting to her feet with arthritic slowness, Marceline winced as her muscles throbbed in protest. Her back and side ached from where the heavy bag had thudded against her as she'd ran, and her shoulder throbbed where the strap had cut into it. Bracing herself with a deep breath, Marceline stretched to her full height, arms curving backwards over her head, until she felt her backbone click painfully back into place.

Limping over to the woodpile, she stiffly bent over to collect an armful of chopped wood, and then carried it to the fireplace. The embers of yesterday's fire were cold and dead, Marceline knew she should have checked them the previous night but she'd been too tired to care about how she'd start the fire in the morning. Sighing, she piled some small twigs and a handful of shredded paper in the centre of yesterday's ashes and then used the firesteel to rain sprays of white-hot sparks over them until they caught light.

As she stacked the firewood in a square-sided pyramid around the burning kindling, Marceline scowled to herself as she reflected on the previous day's events. She had to admit that she felt pretty stupid now, running from that strange girl as if she'd been something terrifying. If the girl had been a mutant then Marceline wouldn't have run, or at least not far, but she had barely been a threat, she had just been a girl. And that stupid dress she'd been wearing would have slowed her down if she'd tried to chase her. But all she'd done was smile.

Maybe it was the glint of teeth that had spooked her, Marceline told herself, things didn't normally show their teeth if they were friendly. Granted, she was drawing that conclusion from the wild animals she'd seen over the years, but it was still a reasonable conclusion, Marceline was sure of that. Even if she did have fangs of her own that could give a much nastier bite.

Come to think of it, she could probably have bested the strange girl in a fight without much difficulty, those little creatures she'd been carrying had barely been a foot tall and wouldn't have posed much of a challenge either. Unless the whole thing had been a trap of course, that made more sense. At least it made more sense than finding a harmless girl living in a formerly mutant-infested city anyway. Maybe the girl was the reason there weren't any mutants. Maybe she was like the monster from the other city, only in disguise. Marceline shuddered at the thought.

The burning kindling was starting to gutter and crackle, snapping Marceline out of her reverie. Crouching down, she blew on the embers gently to make the flames rise until they finally spread to the firewood stacked around the tinder. Once she was sure the fire wasn't going to go out at the first sign of a breeze, she removed the saucepan from the tripwire and tipped the pebbles out of it, then went outside to fill it with fresh water.

As she pushed her way through the blanket covering the entrance, Marceline froze as she smelled something strange, a warm, sweet scent that seemed strangely familiar and comforting. A short distance from the tree, balanced on one of its roots that had broken the surface of the ground, was a white china plate bearing half a dozen dark brown muffins. Marceline knew what those were, she'd seen them on adverts in old grocery stores, but she'd never found any that were still edible. For a start, she'd never found any that still looked like muffins, even the ones that had still been in sealed packages had been hard, shrivelled balls.

Still, muffins certainly didn't appear from nowhere, but the smell of them was so tantalising that Marceline couldn't stop herself from creeping cautiously forwards towards them, keeping a sharp eye out for traps. But there were no tripwires or triggers, and she reached the plate without incident.

Closer up they smelled even better, and even though Marceline was sure she'd never smelt anything like them, the scent still seemed to trigger hidden switches in her brain, recalling near-forgotten memories of the time before the war, of her mother, a time when there were lots of people. And her mouth was watering furiously, her stomach growling and reminding her that she hadn't eaten since the previous morning.

Despite her suspicion, Marceline picked one of the muffins up all the same, warily weighing it in one hand. It felt heavy and dense, and slightly warm as if it had sat in the sun for a long time, but the sunlight wasn't strong enough to have warmed it yet. Realising that, Marceline dropped it and backed away slightly, caution warring with hunger.

"It's okay; I just made them this morning." At the sound of the strange voice, Marceline literally jumped, then gasped as she saw the pink girl emerge from her hiding place among the bulrushes by the pond. Marceline scurried backwards on all fours until she was half in and half out of the tree, snarling like a frightened wild thing as the girl slowly approached.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the girl said softly, her voice gentle and sweet. "Don't be scared."

"I'm not scared!" Marceline snapped at her furiously. "You surprised me, that's all. Why did you follow me? What do you want?" Her nails dug into the ground as the girl picked up the plate and came closer, tensing in case she made any sudden moves, but she stopped several feet away.

"You looked hungry," the girl replied, apparently unfazed by Marceline's obvious hostility. "I haven't seen another person in, well, a long, long time. Here," she said, setting the plate down and pushing it towards the other girl. "They're good. Honest." Seeing that Marceline was still eyeing her doubtfully, the girl picked up one of the muffins and took a bite out of it, chewed it and swallowed without any apparent ill-effects. "See?"

Watching the girl eat only reminded Marceline of just how ravenous she was. Throwing caution to the wind she snatched up a muffin and sank her teeth into it, tearing at it like an animal. It was wonderful, sticky, sweet and filled with dried fruit and seeds, unlike anything else she'd ever tasted. Better than anything else she'd ever tasted as well. She ate the muffin in three bites and moved to pick up another, then paused and looked back at the girl, feeling slightly awkward now.

The strange girl was still eating her muffin with small, dainty bites, a far cry from the way Marceline had wolfed hers down. She nodded encouragingly as she saw the other girl looking at her, and Marceline seized another but this time she ate more slowly.

Marceline was starting to feel uncomfortably aware of just how different they looked. The girl was still wearing that impractical dress, and it was immaculate even though she must have come here on foot, all the way from the city. Her long pink hair was now gathered into a neat ponytail and her skin was clean and smooth. Marceline on the other hand was in various stages of grubby to filthy, her hair a wild, matted mess and her clothes ragged and worn. She had to wonder exactly how the girl stayed so clean, in the wasteland water was for drinking, not bathing.

"Thank you," Marceline said eventually as she finished her second muffin, slowly relaxing her tensed position and sinking down onto her haunches. The strange girl also sat, drawing her knees up to her chest and clasping her arms around them, looking at Marceline as if she was some kind of interesting creature at a zoo.

"You're welcome," the girl replied with a smile. "What's your name?"

"Marceline." It felt strange hearing her name after all this time, even if she was saying it herself. "Marceline Abadeer. Who are you?" she added roughly as an afterthought."

"I'm Princess Bubblegum, I..." She didn't get any further before Marceline interrupted her.

"That's a stupid name." Since the only thing she'd spoken to in the last three years was Hambo, Marceline had grown accustomed to speaking her mind. On afterthought, she realised that what she'd said was rude but before she could apologise the girl spoke again.

"Is it?" To Marceline's surprise the princess didn't sound offended, but genuinely concerned. "I thought it would be appropriate. What's stupid about it?"

Marceline blinked, thrown by the question. "Uhh… princesses live in castles?" she offered lamely. The girl did have a crown after all. "Never mind. Where did you come from?"

"Over there," the girl said simply, pointing back across the hills in the rough direction of the ruined city.

"Well yeah," Marceline replied, with some exasperation. "But what about before that? Where are your parents?"

The princess paused, considering that question. "I don't think I have any," she said eventually, forehead creased in thought. "I was born after the bombs fell, and I was all alone."

Marceline felt an unfamiliar rush of sympathy at the girl's words, slowly unfolding herself to sit more comfortably on the grass. "I don't have parents either," she told her. "Well, I think my dad's alive, but I haven't seen him since before the bombs." She wasn't sure exactly how the pink girl could have been born after the bombs, but she decided it was best not to ask. "What were those little people you had? Where are they?" she queried with a cautious look around herself.

"Those were my candy folk." The princess said that as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "They live in the park. I didn't want to bring them with me in case you were scared."

"I wasn't scared of them!" Marceline protested. "Where did THEY come from?"

The pink girl had also settled into a more comfortable position, legs tucked under her long skirt. "Oh, that's easy, I made them," she replied, again as if this was completely natural.

"Oh, okay, I... Wait, what?" Because of the girl's casual tone, it took a few seconds for Marceline to realise what she'd said. "You MADE them?"

"Well, yeah. I was lonely," the princess added, as if that explained everything. "I tried talking to the green people but all they did was ignore me or try to eat me." She made a disgusted face at the memory. "It was gross. Then the Lich came and ate them all instead. I still felt kind of bad for them though."

Marceline froze at those words, her eyes going wide in genuine fear this time. She still had nightmares about cold, bone hands seizing her and the rotted-meat stench of the monster's breath. "What's the Lich?" she asked shakily, one hand unconsciously moving to her matted hair to make sure nothing was caught in it.

"I don't know its real name, but it looked like a corpse so I called it the Lich," the princess explained. "Because that means corpse. Anyway, it was this big skeleton thing with horns; it killed all the mutants then went away." She paused as she saw the look on Marceline's face and noticed how pale she'd become. "Are you okay? It's not the muffins is it? Do you have gluten sensitivity?"

Maybe if she'd known what gluten was Marceline could have answered that, but she was far more concerned about this 'Lich'. "The monster," she began, her voice trembling slightly. "The Lich, whatever, where is it? It tried to kill me once… why didn't it kill you?" Marceline felt the first stirrings of a horrible suspicion that maybe this girl worked for the monster somehow, and wished she'd kept the hatchet closer to hand.

"Don't worry, it's not here any more," the pink girl replied casually, not seeming to grasp just how frightened Marceline had been by the mention of the creature. "It came through about five years ago, before I'd made any candy folk, and killed all the mutants but then it just left. And it never killed me because I looked… kind of different at the time. And this stops it seeing me." She tapped the turquoise stone in her crown meaningfully. "So it didn't even know I was here."

There was a moment of silence as Marceline considered that, trying to work out the passage of time in her head. If this… Lich… had come through here five years ago, that would have been before it ran into her and Simon in the other city. Before Simon left. "What if it comes back?" she asked, part of her wondering why she was looking to this strange girl for reassurance when she wasn't any older than Marceline herself.

"I don't think it will." The confidence in the girl's voice was reassuring, and Marceline slowly began to relax again. "All it did was kill the mutants, it only seemed to want the green goo that was in them. It's never come back, I was worried that it would turn up again when I made the candy folk, but it never did. Besides, even if I didn't have the crown to protect me, I know a safe place."

"That thing protects you?" Marceline had only just registered the significance of what the girl had said about the crown, on edge again now that she'd realised it must be magic like Simon's crown... he'd always said it protected him. "Does it talk to you?" she demanded harshly. No sense in speaking to the girl any more if she was just going to go crazy and leave like Simon did.

"The crown?" The princess sounded bewildered by the question. "Why would it talk, it's just metal. It's the stone that protects me, but it doesn't talk either. Why?"

"Take it off then!" Marceline snapped, forgetting her earlier concerns about rudeness. "If it doesn't control you, take it off!"

Still with the same nonplussed expression, the girl reached up and delicately plucked the circlet from her hair, setting it down on the grass beside her. "Is that better?"

Marceline watched the girl carefully for a few seconds, but her face and hair didn't change at all like Simon's had. Keeping a wary eye on her, Marceline pushed the crown further away but the girl's only reaction was to give her an odd look, she didn't try to reach for it or stop her moving it. Maybe it was safe then.

"You… don't like crowns?" the pink girl asked, looking at Marceline as if she was also having second thoughts about the company she was currently keeping.

"I used to have a friend who had a magic crown," Marceline muttered without looking at her, wanting to make the explanation as brief as possible. Thinking about it still hurt. "It made him crazy and he went away. So no, I don't like them." When she glanced up at the girl she saw that she was no longer looking at her with doubt, now her magenta eyes were sympathetic, as if she understood perfectly though Marceline didn't know how she possibly could.

"Oh. Is that why you're alone now?" she asked gently, slowly reaching out to touch Marceline's hand. Starting slightly at the unexpected and unwanted contact, Marceline snatched it away and folded her arms across her chest.

"Yes," she said shortly, in a tone that made it quite clear that she wasn't prepared to discuss the subject any further.

"Okay." With that, the subject was dropped. "Are you going to live here?"

The question was innocuous enough, but Marceline's emotions were still raw and it was the girl's fault for picking at them. "Why do you care?" she snapped with uncalled for aggression. "It's not like the tree belongs to you, does it?" She saw the princess flinch at her hostile tone and felt a flicker of guilt, so far she'd been nothing but kind. It had been a long time since Marceline had experienced kindness. "Sorry," she muttered. "I just haven't seen anyone else since… well, not in a long time."

"I understand." The girl smiled warmly, unintentionally making Marceline feel worse. "I was alone for a long time too." Getting back to her feet, the princess brushed her skirt down as Marceline got up as well. "Look, I need to go back now, but if it's okay with you, I could come back tomorrow?"

"All right," Marceline replied, with a hesitant smile of her own. Bending down, she retrieved the plate and remaining muffins and offered them to the girl, who shook her head.

"No, they're for you. If you want them," she added uncertainly. "Seriously, you don't have a gluten allergy, right?"

"I don't even know what that is," Marceline admitted. "But I really liked them. And I was hungry."

"Well, good." Again, the girl's smile lit up her face. "Then I'll see you tomorrow I guess."

Marceline nodded, her face feeling strange as she smiled for the second time in three years. "Yeah. See you tomorrow." She watched as the girl walked away, feeling both an odd twinge of regret that she was leaving and a paradoxical relief at being left alone.

Once the princess had disappeared into the hills, Marceline devoured the rest of the muffins in minutes.


	5. Morning Dew

_Where have all the people gone my honey,_   
_Where have all the people gone today._   
_There's no need for you to be worrying about all those people,_   
_You never see those people anyway._   
\- Bonnie Dobson: Mountain Dew

_"_ _Now they could see that she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds." With Marcy on his lap, Simon traced his finger across the sentence as he read aloud so she could see the words. It wouldn't be long until she could read the fairy-tale book for herself. "Nobody but a real princess could be that sensitive."_

_Marcy giggled, holding Hambo in her arms. "Princesses are silly. No wonder there aren't any left." To a six year-old who'd spent half of her life in the wasteland that was the legacy of the Mushroom War, sleeping on one mattress was a luxury. "Why would a prince want to marry one anyway? Would he have to sleep on all those mattresses and feather beds too? What if they fell off?"_

_Simon chuckled, ruffling the little girl's hair. "Well, it is a fairy story Marcy; I don't think the fairies would let them fall off. Besides, princes have to marry princesses."_

_"_ _No they don't!" Marcy protested. "I liked the story with the prince that was a bear and the peasant girl who saved him from the trolls because she could wash his shirt. I bet a princess couldn't have washed his shirt."_

 _"_ _You have a point there," Simon admitted. "I guess being able to wash a shirt is more useful than being able to feel a pea through all those beds." Marcy nodded in agreement then yawned, nestling closer against his chest. "Okay missy, I think it's time you were in bed."_

 _"_ _Just one more?" Marcy pleaded. "But one that doesn't have a stupid princess in it."_

 _"_ _Well, all right, let's see what else is in here." Turning the page to the next story, Simon froze as he saw the title. 'The Snow Queen'. "But not that one." Flipping hurriedly through the pages of the old book, he stopped at the next one. "The Ugly Duckling. Good, no princesses in this one." Simon cleared his throat and started reading as Marcy slowly drifted to sleep. "It was lovely summer weather in the country, and the golden corn, the green oats, and the haystacks piled up in the meadows looked beautiful…"_

Everything Marceline knew about princesses came from the book of stories that Simon had often read to her when she was small. They lived in castles, sometimes had evil fairies cast spells on them, sometimes had to be rescued and were generally a liability. Except for that one princess who'd had all her things stolen by her maid and was forced to look after geese and had a talking horse that could still talk after its head was cut off. She'd gotten herself out of trouble.

 _"_ _And then the king asked what kind of sentence such a person deserves. And the false bride answered… uhhhh…" Simon hesitated, but then continued with unconvincing brightness. "The false bride answered that they should be banished forever and ever."_

 _"_ _That's not what it says!" Marceline said indignantly. "It says that she should be put naked into a barrel of nails and dragged through the streets by two white horses till she's dead." The little girl frowned. "Why do they have to be white horses?"_

_Simon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Well, at least your reading is coming along pretty well…" he said, half to himself._

The book had been in Simon's pack, so Marceline only had her memories of the stories to refer to. Simon had let her read the book for herself once she had learned, had used it to teach her how, but since it had been a big, heavy tome he'd carried it himself despite her protests. It had been a frivolous thing to haul around with them, but Marceline had loved it, reading it over and over whenever she'd had the chance. Maybe that was why Simon had never gotten rid of it.

Marceline was curled up in her bedroll, watching the sky growing lighter through the gap in the tree trunk. She still found herself thinking about Simon sometimes whenever she wasn't dealing with the more pressing concerns of survival. Usually that was when she was either going to sleep at night or before she'd gotten up in the morning. She still missed him terribly, even though she'd accepted that he wasn't coming back.

Sometimes she wondered where he was now, if he was okay, or at least as okay as someone whose mind had been twisted like a paperclip by a malevolent magic crown could be. Marceline also wondered how he would have reacted to the strange princess, but she supposed it wouldn't have been much different to how he'd reacted to her when he'd found her. Well, maybe a little different because the princess wasn't a screaming toddler. But he would have been nice to her, she was sure of that. And it made her feel even more awkward about her own reaction.

Wriggling out of her bedroll, Marceline smoothed it out and set Hambo down on top, then climbed down to the main chamber. It was the first time in years that she could remember waking up without feeling hungry, though she was regretting not leaving a muffin for breakfast. Marceline couldn't help hoping that the princess would bring more, if she really did come back that was, then felt awkward that she had nothing to give her in return. Maybe she'd like a fish or something?

This time she hadn't let the fire burn out, and managed to get it going again after a few pokes with a stick, stacking fresh wood around the embers. Removing the tripwire trap from the door, she filled the saucepan with water from the pond and left it to boil over the fire, then retrieved her fishing line and headed back outside. Marceline didn't bother putting her shoes on, her feet were still raw and blistered from the run back from the city and the dewy grass felt wonderfully soothing against them.

Settling down on the shady side of the pond where the fish would be, Marceline cast the line into the water, the spoon lure flashing in the sun. If she'd had time she would have dug up some worms, but she wasn't sure when the girl would appear, and that would just have made her even filthier than she already was. Marceline couldn't remember when she'd last had a proper bath, probably the last time she'd had to swim a river, and that had been at least a year ago. Generally she made do with a few splashes of water, she didn't have any soap and it had never really been high on her scavenging priorities. So she probably smelled bad, she knew that, but she had never really cared since it wasn't like Hambo had minded. But this princess… she might.

"Well it's not like I can just go bathe in the pond," she muttered to herself, tugging gently at the line now and again to make the lure flash. "That would scare the fish. Maybe I should try and find a river nearby or something." She considered asking the princess, assuming she showed up, exactly how she stayed so clean. But then again, maybe that was a princess thing.

An hour later she'd caught two large carp then boned and gutted them, rinsing her hands in the pond so thoroughly that her lower arms now looked twice as clean as the rest of her. There was still no sign of the princess, and the sun was slowly creeping towards its zenith, so Marceline was starting to doubt that she would come at all. In the fairy stories the dirty peasants nearly always turned out to be princes or princesses who'd reward people for being kind to them, but Marceline was just Marceline. Maybe that was why the princess hadn't come back.

Marceline told herself that was ridiculous, she was fourteen now and far too old to believe in fairy stories. Maybe the princess really had been nice to her because she wanted to, not because she wanted anything in return. She'd said that Marceline had been the only person she'd seen in a long time, hadn't she? Sighing, Marceline went back into the tree and looked around it critically. It was hardly messy, she didn't have enough possessions to even make it messy, it was just… bare. She considered brushing the spiderweb in the corner away, but the spider hadn't done anything to deserve that so she left it alone and went to the upper chamber to retrieve her journal.

Opening it at a new page after marking another tally mark in the back, Marceline tapped the stubby pencil against the paper as she considered what to write. She was just starting to write the first letters when she heard a voice outside, her hand jerking in surprise to score a dark graphite line across the page.

"Hello?" It was definitely the princess, though Marceline couldn't see her through the gap in the trunk, it faced away from the entrance to the tree's interior. Putting her journal down, she rapidly climbed down the rope and went outside.

The pink girl was wearing different clothes today, loose pants and a sweatshirt though both were still pink. And she was still wearing her crown. The girl smiled as she saw Marceline, setting the backpack she was carrying down, but Marceline's gaze immediately settled on the small green figure perched on her shoulder.

It was roughly humanoid in shape, though it had no indication of whether it was male or female and no hair to speak of, and its bright emerald flesh seemed oddly translucent. It was looking straight at her, then tugged on a lock of the girl's pink hair as it chattered at the princess.

"What is THAT?" Marceline asked sharply, not moving from the entrance to the tree.

"He's Jib," Princess Bubblegum replied, lifting him from her shoulder and setting him down gently on the grass. "And he is just as scared of you as you are of him."

"I'm not scared of him!" Marceline snapped automatically, and the tiny figure immediately hid behind one of the princess' legs.

"Well, good," the princess replied. "He's harmless. All the candy folk are. I would have been here sooner but a hawk snatched one of his brothers and the others were frightened so I had to calm them down. I brought Jib with me because he was still scared."

"Hawks eat them?" Marceline asked, curious despite the girl's sorrowful expression.

"Well, no," the princess replied, her expression awkward. "Being grabbed like that freaks them out and, well, let's just say that hawk won't be coming back." Jib, who had edged back round the princess, jabbered something affirmative, brandishing what looked suspiciously like a tail feather from a large hawk.

Marceline couldn't help smiling at that, which sent the small creature scurrying back behind the girl. "So… they all have names?" she asked, privately thinking that 'Jib' was a more sensible name than 'Princess Bubblegum'. The girl nodded in affirmation.

"Yes, but they have to be short or they don't remember them. Usually I name them after the first noises they make when they come out of the soup." Seeing Marceline's bewildered expression, the princess cleared her throat and bent down to open her rucksack. "It's not important. Here, I brought some things for you." Reaching into the bag, she pulled out a bundle of tightly-rolled clothes and several foil wrapped packages that Marceline recognised at once, ration packs from before the war. Whenever she and Simon had found an old store that had once sold camping supplies he'd always taken her inside to search for them, explaining that they were better than cans and easier to carry. Where the princess had gotten them from she had no idea.

"Uhm… thank you," Marceline offered lamely, wondering if the new clothes were a subtle hint. The princess was still pulling ration packs out of the bag, and she shifted uncomfortably, not sure how to react to such generosity. Would it be rude to refuse them? Was she supposed to refuse them?

Oblivious to Marceline's discomfort, the princess slung her now-empty bag over one shoulder. "I wasn't sure what you'd need," she explained "So I mostly just brought food and I thought you could use some new clothes since, uhh…" She broke off awkwardly, as if she was concerned that she was being rude.

"I could use new clothes, yeah." Marceline admitted, looking down at what she was wearing and pulling a wry face. "I've been travelling for a while so, uh, I never really had a chance to find any." She paused as she considered her next words carefully, knowing that she herself probably wouldn't have reacted well to this question. "Where do you get all this stuff?" she asked eventually. "I mean… you must have a lot since you're giving all this to me, and I'm grateful, believe me, but you barely know me… don't you need this stuff too?" Given that the other girl was dressed in clean, undamaged clothes and didn't look thin Marceline doubted that, but thought it would be polite to ask.

"Oh, there's lots of it back in the city," the princess replied dismissively. "I can show you if you'd like, you can take whatever you need."

Marceline eyed the girl suspiciously for a few moments, internally questioning her intentions. She had more of those little creatures back in the city and if they could deal with a hawk then maybe they weren't as harmless as they looked. She just couldn't imagine why the princess would be helping her like this if she didn't mean well. It wasn't like she was going to eat her, since she clearly had plenty of food. Maybe she really was just being kind. "Uhm… maybe another time," Marceline said awkwardly. "My feet are gross right now from last time," she added in explanation.

Looking down, the princess grimaced. "Isn't that painful?" she asked, sounding genuinely worried. "I should have brought you a first aid kit or something, that was silly of me…"

"It's okay!" Marceline said quickly, somewhat bewildered by the girl's apparent concern and also somewhat embarrassed. Since Simon had left she'd always considered herself self-sufficient and having someone make a fuss about her felt increasingly uncomfortable. "Uhh… do you want to come inside?" she asked as the gathered up the supplies that the girl had brought. If she had to be honest, Marceline was hoping the princess would say no, but instead she smiled and nodded.

"Okay, thank you. I've never been inside a tree before." The girl crouched down to lift Jib back on to her shoulder and followed Marceline into the tree, looking around herself with interest.

Marceline on the other hand just felt even more awkward, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other as she watched the princess move around the chamber, running one pink hand over the walls. "I don't know why it's hollow," she said to break what she considered to be an awkward silence. "It was like this when me and Simon found it. He said it must have been hollowed out before the war."

"It's fascinating," the princess replied, certainly not what Marceline had expected to hear. "It shouldn't even be alive like this, but it is. And if it is a Salix Babylonica like it appears, those don't grow so big and they only live for about thirty years. Maybe it was mutated by the bombs."

"Simon said it was a willow." Marceline wasn't sure what a salix was. "And that it was probably older than him. Uhm… are you hungry? I caught some fish earlier, you can have one if you'd like…" Given that the princess had just given her supplies it felt like a stupid thing to ask now and Marceline could feel her face burning with embarrassment.

"That would be lovely, thank you." Again, the princess' reaction was perfectly polite, not showing the slightest flicker of discomfort. Feeling more at ease now, Marceline managed a nervous smile, then turned her attention to the fire.

o.o.o.o.o

Despite Marceline's apprehensions, the princess seemed perfectly happy sitting cross-legged opposite her by the fire. If she'd had any reservations about eating a roast carp without any form of utensil besides the sharpened stick it was skewered on, she certainly hadn't shown them. Marceline was just glad she'd still had the plate the muffins had been on because while she had no objections to eating with her hands she wasn't so sure about her companion.

Marceline was starting to wonder if she was really a princess or if it was just a name, since Bubblegum certainly didn't act like one. At least not all the time, though she still seemed able to maintain a ladylike decorum even while stabbing bits of carp onto a stick. Jib was curled up beside her like a small dog, showing absolutely no interest in the food.

"Doesn't your little candy guy eat anything?" Marceline asked curiously, only just remembering to swallow before she spoke.

"Oh, they don't eat this sort of thing," the princess replied, petting the little creature's head gently. "They only eat sugar; they need that to maintain their biomass."

"Sugar," Marceline repeated, frowning slightly as she considered that. "Like… other candy?" She found the concept somewhat disturbing, if these little creatures were made of candy, and they ate candy…

The princess must have realised what Marceline was thinking by the look on her face and shook her head with a giggle. "They don't eat each other, they only eat non-sentient candy. Otherwise that would be totally donked."

Marceline wasn't quite sure how that distinction worked, but nodded all the same. "Okay." She also wondered where the other girl was getting the candy from, but assumed it must be the same place she was getting the other supplies. Marceline was beginning to reconsider going back to the city, not least because she could really do with some extra utensils. She'd had to give the princess the tin cup to drink from while she used the flask, so having extra water containers would be useful for a start. And being able to search the city without worrying about mutants would mean she wouldn't have to worry about travelling light in case she had to run. "Are all the mutants really gone?"

"Well, I haven't seen any in years," the princess replied, taking a sip of water from the cup. "And I've been all across the city to look for things. Sometimes wild animals come in to scavenge but they run away if you shout at them." As she looked at her, Marceline got the strangest impression that the princess was just as concerned about her reactions. "You could come back with me if you want," she offered tentatively. "Not to stay of course, unless you wanted to, but I don't mind showing you where things are."

"Maybe in a few days when my feet are better?" Just the thought of walking that distance and back again made Marceline's blisters throb. "If you're going to come back again that is."

"Of course." The princess gave her a warm smile, which Marceline shyly returned. "You really are the only person I've seen in years, and it gets lonely not having anyone to talk to." Beside her, Jib sat up and chattered something that Marceline couldn't decipher, but he sounded indignant. "Apart from you and your brothers of course," the princess said to him apologetically. "Besides, Marceline isn't a candy person, she's different."

If it had been strange for Marceline to hear her name when she spoke it herself, it was even stranger to hear someone else say it. And the princess had remembered it. "Give me three days," she said, making her decision. "Then I'll come back with you, okay?"

The princess nodded, looking pleased by the prospect. "Okay."


	6. Deeper Underground

_I'm going deeper underground_   
_There's too much panic in this town_   
\- Jamiroquai: "Deeper Underground"

"…and over there are more shops, I haven't been into all of them yet so I'm not sure what's there." Princess Bubblegum had been pointing out various locations from the moment the two girls had arrived in the ruined city, though she'd been talking for pretty much the entire journey from the tree as well. Marceline was used to keeping as quiet as possible so the constant barrage of words had made her uneasy at first, but it did seem to make the long walk feel shorter.

The princess also didn't seem to mind that Marceline wasn't offering much in the way of conversation beyond the occasional yes or no answer, happy to fill up the awkward silence herself. It wasn't that Marceline didn't want to talk to her, she just couldn't think of anything to say. Besides, she'd always kept quiet and listened when Simon was telling her things so it seemed like the right thing to do.

Marceline had told the princess that she'd come back to the city with her after three days, and she'd stuck to that, so when the other girl had arrived that morning she'd been waiting for her. The blisters on her feet were healing and less painful now, and the princess had brought her a pair of sturdy leather boots which felt heavy and strange on her feet, but didn't chafe her toes like the canvas sneakers.

"I've been making a map," the princess continued, practically skipping along the cracked asphalt of the old road. "So if you want you can take a copy and mark where things are on it, that would help me too. I'll show you the vault first though, that's where I got most of the things I brought you."

"Okay," Marceline replied, still keeping a sharp eye out for any mutants despite the princess' assurances that they were gone. "How did you make a map?" she asked curiously. "Wouldn't you have to see the city from really high up for that?"

"I found maps from before the war," the girl explained. "So I took those and updated them when I went exploring, I haven't covered the whole city but I think I got most of it. Sometimes the old buildings still fall down though so it changes." She turned to look at Marceline with sudden urgency. "Don't go into any buildings where the walls are cracked, especially if it's a big building, they're dangerous. I collapsed one- I mean I saw one collapse when a mutant went inside."

Marceline frowned at the way the princess had corrected herself, but she supposed that if she had collapsed a building, she wouldn't be here to talk about it. "I'll remember that," she replied. "Simon didn't like going into big buildings unless we had to because he thought they might not be safe."

"Well, he was right," the princess responded. It struck Marceline that the other girl had never asked who Simon was, but maybe she had guessed that he was the friend who had gone crazy and left. Or maybe she was just being polite. "The vault is okay though," the girl continued. "It's all underground."

"Underground?" Marceline asked as the two of them stepped into the same park she'd found the princess in the last time she'd came here. "Isn't it dark?" Darkness didn't bother her at all, but she knew that Simon hadn't been able to see in the dark like she could. Maybe the princess could though?

"No, it's got lights, it's fine," the princess replied casually as they headed for the fountain.

"Lights? You mean… like electricity?" Marceline had very, very vague memories of switches that illuminated rooms, and she had seen plenty of derelict light fixtures in ruined buildings, but she'd never seen one that worked since before the bombs.

"Yes!" The girl seemed pleased that Marceline knew what electricity was. As they reached the fountain there was a flurry of activity as the small candy folk came rushing out to meet them and crowd around Princess Bubblegum's feet like a flock of technicoloured chicks, chattering at her excitedly. Marceline still had no idea what they were saying, but the princess seemed to understand them perfectly. "Of course I'm back you sillies," she said fondly as she knelt among them, giggling as several of them scaled her long hair to perch on her shoulders. "They worry when I'm gone," she explained to Marceline apologetically.

Marceline couldn't help smiling as she watched the tiny figures clambering over the princess as she fussed over them like a mother hen. "Yeah, I can see that. Oh, hey!" A familiar green candy person had hopped onto the princess' shoulder and waved at her, jabbering something that seemed to end in 'een'.

"Yes Jib, that is Marceline," the princess said to him. "We're going down to the vault, so you'll have to let me get up now." She lifted the candy folk on her shoulders back down to the ground, and gently shooed the ones in her lap, carefully getting back to her feet to avoid knocking any of them over. Reaching into her pocket, the princess scattered what looked like large, brightly coloured sugar crystals among them, which they immediately swarmed over like ants. "There, that should distract them. Come on."

Leading Marceline to the far side of the park, the princess went on down what would once have been a main street, then turned into a smaller side street. She stopped outside a nondescript, single story building and glanced back towards Marceline. "Uhm… you don't freak out at skeletons, right? Because there's skeletons."

Marceline shrugged dismissively. "I've seen skeletons," she replied. "I'll be fine." Truthfully, she'd seen so many skeletons over the years that she was largely indifferent to them now, but she didn't want to appear too callous. She didn't want to seem scared either though, especially since the princess seemed so quick to assume that her reactions meant that she was frightened.

"Good." Turning back to the building, which looked like a small store, Bubblegum pushed the door open and went inside. Marceline was slightly surprised that it opened so easily but guessed that was because the princess had broken the lock already, and followed her into the dim interior. She recoiled sharply as the other girl pushed something on the wall which flooded the room with harsh fluorescent light, rubbing her eyes as they stung and watered.

"Sorry," the princess apologised as Marceline's vision slowly returned. "I should have warned you."

As the white spots dancing in front of her eyes faded, Marceline realised that they weren't inside a store at all. The walls were plain brick and while there was a counter the only things on it were what she recognised as old computers, Simon had told her about those… but these ones were working. Looking around, Marceline couldn't see any sign of the skeletons that the princess had mentioned until she looked around the counter.

The bones were dark with age and some looked gnawed, but Marceline could still make out that there were four skeletons there, three humans and one dog. Two of the human skeletons were adult, but the third was much smaller, and the dog's bones were jumbled amongst it as if the animal had been standing over it protectively when it had died. A child and a pet maybe. As she gazed at them, she unconsciously wrapped her arms around herself with a long, shuddering sigh. Marceline wasn't afraid of skeletons, but they were a reminder that things hadn't always been like this. And also a reminder that in the grand scheme of things, she'd been extremely lucky to survive this long.

_"_ _Why did the war happen, Simon?" Marcy asked as they sat by the campfire. It wasn't the first time, or the second, but Simon had never given her a proper answer before, he'd always said she wouldn't understand until she was older. But now she was nine, and in her mind that was old enough._

_Simon didn't reply at first, taking his glasses off and cleaning them on his shirt, which meant he was thinking. He sighed, heavily, then looked at her with sad eyes as he put his glasses back on. "There were a lot of reasons Marcy, and none of them were good." He paused, wondering how he could break down the powder keg of the pre-war world into something Marcy could understand. "It started because two people, two countries, hated each other so very much that they wanted to hurt each other very badly."_

_"_ _Why didn't the other people stop them?" the girl asked, looking confused. "Couldn't the other countries tell them to stop fighting?"_

_"_ _You'd think so, but it wasn't that simple." Simon replied. "Some countries thought that one side was right. Some thought the other side were right. Some didn't get involved at all. But then the first bomb was dropped, and that… that was the end of things. Nobody knew who dropped the first one, but that changed things. It was like… uhh…" He scratched his head, trying to think of an analogy that would make sense to her. "Imagine… if you had a big, scary weapon. But you didn't use it, because it was so scary that you thought just having it would scare people so you'd never have to use it. Do you understand?"_

_Marcy nodded, though she was hugging Hambo close to her chest as she gazed at Simon with wide eyes. "Did people stop being scared of it?"_

_"_ _Not exactly." Simon sighed again. "The other people had scary weapons too. Just about everyone had them. Even people that weren't supposed to have them. But the idea was that nobody would use them because then everyone would, and destroy the world."_

_"_ _That's a stupid plan!" Marcy said sharply. "Why couldn't everyone just have gotten rid of the scary weapons?"_

_"_ _Because nobody wanted to be the only one who didn't have them if they were the only ones who got rid of them," Simon explained. "They thought that not having them put them in more danger. But in the end… everyone used them. Some of them were trying to stop other people from using theirs by bombing them first, but people planned for that and made sure that if they got bombed, they'd still be able to bomb the people who did it, even if they were all dead. They called it mutual assured destruction. MAD."_

_"_ _It WAS mad!" The little girl looked like she was going to cry. "What about all the people who didn't like the war? You said you didn't like it."_

_Simon smiled at her sadly and moved to sit beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. Marcy burrowed into his chest, holding Hambo tightly. "The people who didn't like the war weren't the people in charge," he said quietly. "People protested of course, but that didn't make any difference. And when the bombs fell… everyone died whether they liked the war or not. Mad."_

Marceline snapped back to the present as the princess tapped at one of the computer keyboards, her slender fingers dancing across the keys with practiced ease. Marceline had never been entirely sure what computers were for, according to Simon they had been for all kinds of things, like they were some kind of magical book and store and game all in one, but they really didn't look that impressive.

As the princess hit one final key, Marceline heard a dull thud from somewhere beneath them, followed by another, then the floor shuddered beneath her feet as a large rectangular section dropped by about a foot and slid into the wall with a hiss of hydraulics. Cautiously moving to the edge and looking down, Marceline could see a long circular shaft that reminded her of a sewer entrance, only twice the size and at least five times as deep. There was a sturdy metal ladder welded into the wall and oval lights lining the tunnel in pairs for the first few feet, then it disappeared into darkness.

"I'll go first," Bubblegum said, moving forwards to start the descent into the tunnel. "I have to keep it closed up or the candy folk could fall in. That's happened a couple of times." She started to climb down the ladder with surprising speed, and Marceline saw that as she neared the darkened area another pair of lights snapped on as if they'd been triggered by her movement. Waiting until she was sure she wouldn't end up stepping on the princess' head, Marceline followed her.

The ladder was surprisingly easy to climb; the rungs were flat and textured to stop her feet from slipping and the sides had been coated with some kind of rubber to make them easy to grip. Here and there she could see small shreds of bright pink that matched the princess' hair ingrained into the rungs, but it didn't look like hair at all, it looked solid. Marceline didn't think it important though, she was more interested in their destination.

Marceline had no way of measuring how far below ground they were, but as she reached the bottom of the ladder and looked up she guessed that it was at least four or five storeys underground. The shaft ended in an even larger, semi-circular tunnel with walls of metal that shone dully in the artificial light. The princess was already moving down the tunnel purposely, her feet ringing softly on the metal floor. Marceline hurried to catch up with her, feeling slightly unnerved by the silence and the clinical sterility of their surroundings. There was barely even dust on the floor, just smooth, textured metal that looked as if no-one had ever set foot on it.

"What is this place?" Marceline asked, her voice echoing hollowly in the empty space.

"This is the vault," the princess replied, pointing ahead as a large metal door was illuminated at their approach. It towered over both of them; the size of a small building, and the metal it was made of had an odd, rainbow sheen. It didn't look like any kind of door that Marceline had seen before, it was circular and had no handle, the only feature on it was a thin zig-zagging line down the centre that reminded Marceline of jagged teeth.

As they reached the door, the princess moved off to the side towards a small console set into the wall while Marceline stared at the door, gingerly reaching out one hand to touch it. The metal was cold against her palm, but as the other girl punched a code into the number pad below the console screen she felt it vibrate slightly. Marceline snatched her hand away without needing to be told, half-suspecting the door's metal teeth to snap at her. Instead she heard a low hum, then with the same hydraulic hiss that she'd heard in the room above, it smoothly slid open like the jaws of some giant beast.

The princess walked through the open door without hesitation, but Marceline hung back, not liking this strange place one bit. There was no sign of skeletons, or wreckage, or anything to suggest that this place had ever had inhabitants, and that spooked her more than the abandoned city ruins above.

"Come on," the princess called to her, the voice echoing just like Marceline's had. "Before it closes."

"How do we get out if it closes?" Marceline called back. "We'll be trapped!"

"I can open it from this side too," the other girl reassured her. "Don't be…" Before she could say 'scared', Marceline had jumped through the doorway with an expression that suggested that she was expecting it to close on her.

Marceline found herself in a large, metal-walled vestibule, with archways leading off into darkness on each side. There was a hiss behind her, and she snapped around to see the door closing as the princess had warned, but there was another console panel on the wall beside it like there had been outside. "You still haven't explained what this place is," she snapped, almost aggressively, feeling like an animal in a trap. "What IS a vault?"

"It was built to protect people from the bombs before the war," the princess explained. "It would have worked too, since the bombs never did anything to it even though they hit the city." Turning towards one of the archways, the pink girl started to head down it, glancing back towards Marceline. "Follow me." More lights snapped on to illuminate a long corridor ahead of them, and Marceline hurried to keep up with the princess, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling.

"Then why aren't there any people here?" she asked nervously, eyes darting from side to side as they passed more archways which had metal doors in place, concealing whatever was behind them.

"Because they never had time to evacuate when the bombs hit," her companion replied. "This place was secret, it was only for people that were important, but they all died when the bombs hit. Some people did try to get in, like the ones upstairs, but they couldn't open the hatch without the codes. It was sad really, because if people had been able to get in here then they would have survived."

Somehow that explanation just unnerved Marceline even more. She could imagine what it had been like for the people whose bones she'd seen, trying desperately to get in while the bombs fell around them, knowing that safety was just beneath their feet. Marceline shuddered at the thought. "Why would they only let important people in? That's not fair."

"There's a lot about the old world that wasn't fair," the princess sighed. "This place was for people that had lots of money."

"Well having lots of money didn't save them, did it?" Marceline snorted. "How did you manage to get in?" There was a long silence as the two girls turned a corner, then went down a flight of metal stairs that clanged beneath their feet, sending ghostly echoes vibrating through the metal corridors. The princess seemed to be considering her reply, either that or she'd lost her way in the maze of metal corridors.

"I was, I mean I am, good at getting into places," she said eventually. "I knew there was something down here because I could feel that the ground was hollow, and when I investigated I found the entrance upstairs. Then I managed to get the computers to let me in."

"How did you learn to use a computer?" Marceline asked, genuinely curious. The extent of her knowledge of how those devices worked stretched to 'push button, stuff happens'.

"I read about them," Bubblegum replied, with an offhand casualness that suggested she didn't think it was a big deal. "And then I took a couple apart to see how they worked. Oh, here we are." She had stopped in front of another archway that was blocked by a metal door, which had a sign above it reading 'STORAGE 1'. As the princess pushed a panel on the wall beside it, the door retracted into the ceiling with a soft hum and click.

Marceline's eyes widened at the sight of what was beyond it, lights flickering on to illuminate what looked like endless shelves. "Woah…"


	7. Protect And Survive

_When Armageddon gets underway_   
_And the rockets come pouring down_   
_All the bloody politicians who started it_   
_Will scuttle off underground_   
\- The Dubliners: “Protect And Survive”

If Marceline had ever heard of the phrase ‘like a kid in a candy store’, and even better, knew what it meant, that would have been exactly how she’d have described herself at that moment. She walked slowly into the room, too stunned to do anything else but stare. Shelves lined every wall of the room and all of them were packed with pristine supplies. There wasn’t even a speck of dust to be seen, as if the storeroom had been kept clean by an invisible maid throughout the years, just spotless silver metal and brightly-coloured packaging.

Again, dim memories stirred in Marceline’s mind. She remembered something like this, from long, long ago. She’d been sitting in one of the trolleys that she’d often seen abandoned in the streets, but it had been shiny and clean and her mother had been there and there had been… music? Blinking, Marceline snapped back to the present and realised that Bubblegum was talking to her.

“…for when it was safe to go back to the surface,” the pink girl finished, standing behind her.

“What?” Marceline asked. “Sorry, I was thinking of something.”

“I said that this store was things that people would need for when the war was over,” Bubblegum repeated. “Once the radiation levels fell and they could go back up and repopulate. Though since this place was only ever for a few dozen people, that probably wouldn’t have worked out too well because of inbreeding depression, you know?”

“Uhhhh… yeah.” Marceline had no idea what the other girl was talking about, but decided to humour her, then turned back to the shelves. They were neatly stocked in what looked like some kind of order, one wall held survival gear like tents and bedrolls, one held tools and equipment, and the last, the one Marceline immediately headed for, held food supplies.

Marceline wasn’t sure what to look at first, eventually lifting a large cardboard box labelled ‘Mountain House’ off one of the shelves and opening it. Inside were large, heavy tins marked ‘FREEZE DRIED’ containing things like beef stew and things Marceline had never even heard of like chilli con carne and lasagne. Presumably those were food as well; each can looked like it held several days’ worth of meals. And there were dozens of similar boxes.

“You mix those with hot water,” Bubblegum said helpfully. “Or you can use cold water if you don’t mind eating them cold.”

“I think I need something bigger to boil water in…” Marceline replied numbly. “You’re not supposed to drink it without boiling it.”

The other girl immediately darted over to one of the other shelves, retrieving what looked like a metal bottle and bringing it over. “You can use this instead of boiling it, you unscrew the bottom and fill it and it filters it for you. It’s really neat. There’s tablets here too that sterilize water, but they make it taste weird.”

Before Marceline could say anything, the pink girl had already bounced over to another shelf, like she’d already mentally indexed where everything was, and came back with a cylindrical metal can that had a hollow bottom. “These are for boiling water, you light a little fire in the bottom and it heats up really quickly. You don’t need much fuel.”

“Have you used these things?” Marceline asked. Although Bubblegum seemed to know everything about the contents of the room, there was no sign that any of the equipment had ever been used or that the assorted packages of food had been opened, which was strange.

“No, but there was an inventory on one of the computers that listed everything that’s here and how it all worked,” the other girl responded cheerfully. “So I read it all in case I ever needed to know.”

“Then… what have you been eating?” As she said those words, Marceline felt a slight flicker of unease… was she really sure that the other girl wasn’t a cannibal? After all, the mutants that had once roamed the city didn’t seem to eat normal food either.

“I’ve been using the cafeteria of course,” Bubblegum replied, as if it was obvious. “Everything here has wicked mad shelf life, so I was using the stuff in the kitchen because it doesn’t last as long. And it has proper ovens and stuff, how do you think I made those muffins?”

“Uhm…” Marceline couldn’t think of a proper response to that. “What’s a cafeteria?”

 

o.o.o.o.o

“Here we are,” Bubblegum said brightly as the two girls entered a large room with a chequered linoleum floor. Marceline followed her closely, trying hard not to show just how unnerved she was by this place. She’d spent the majority of her life in the ruins of the world above scavenging in silent ruins where people had once lived, but somehow the vault was far more eerie than any old home or apartment block.

Maybe it was because nobody had ever lived here, the facility seemed to be waiting for inhabitants that had never and would never come. There was no sound of animals, nor the whisper of wind, nor the hiss of falling dust or rubble. All Marceline could hear was the faint electric hum from the lights and the soft whirr that Bubblegum had called air conditioning. Somehow she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she wasn’t meant to be here.

The other girl didn’t seem to share those feelings in the slightest, casually walking past empty booths and going behind a spotless counter to disappear into a smaller adjoining room. Feeling the hair on the back of her neck prickle, Marceline hurried after her.

At least this room showed some sign of use. It reminded Marceline of a restaurant kitchen she’d searched once, but on a smaller scale and in perfect working order. Cooking utensils were set out on one of the counters and some of the packets and boxes on the shelves had been opened. There was a lingering warm scent in the air which reminded Marceline of the muffins Bubblegum had made for her, a comforting change from the cold sterility of the rest of the complex.

“All this stuff was vacuum sealed or dehydrated,” Bubblegum was explaining. “Though I did collect some things from outside, there’s an old glasshouse in the park that still has fruit trees growing in it.” She shot a critical look towards Marceline as she continued. “Come to think of it, you should probably get some while you’re here.”

“It’s already going to take me forever just to get one of those boxes of cans back to my tree,” Marceline replied defensively. “Unless your little candy guys can carry some.” She hadn’t been serious about the last part, but to her surprise the other girl seemed to consider it.

“No, it would be too heavy for one of them… but if I could get one of those wagons from the living quarters up to the surface then I bet a group of them could pull it…” There was a pause as Bubblegum thought it over, then shook her head. “It would be too far for them. I mean, they’d do it if I asked them but that wouldn’t be fair.”

“I was joking!” Marceline replied. “Uhhhh… but I could probably use one of those wagons in any case. Would help me to fetch firewood.” Shifting uncomfortably, she ran one hand through her tangled hair as she went on. “Uhm… you’re still totally okay with just giving me this stuff?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” The other girl seemed bewildered by the question. “Really, you have more right to it than I do; this place was for people after all.”

Marceline frowned at that, looking at Bubblegum strangely. “But you’re a person as well, right?”

The pink girl started at that, as if remembering something, and giggled nervously. “Uhhhh, yes, of course I am. It’s just that I… don’t come from here.”

“Well, neither do I,” Marceline replied with a shrug. “I don’t even remember where I’m from, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t here.”

“In that case you’ve still got just as much right to it as I do,” Bubblegum seemed eager to change the subject now. “I’m sure we can carry one of the wagons up the ladder between us, come on.” Apparently forgetting that she still hadn’t explained what a cafeteria was, the pink girl quickly moved past Marceline and back out into the corridor.

Surprised by her reaction, it took Marceline a couple of seconds to follow, and in those seconds Bubblegum had already disappeared into the maze of passageways. The sound of her footsteps seemed to echo from all directions, and though she looked around frantically Marceline couldn’t tell which way she’d gone. Her earlier feelings of unease returned tenfold at the prospect of being alone in the empty complex, and if she’d had any idea in which direction the exit lay, she’d have bolted for it there and then.

“Princess?” Marceline’s voice echoed along the corridors, but there was no response. “I don’t know which way you went!” Again, the only reply was Marceline’s own words reflected back at her by the metal walls. She swallowed, hard, telling herself that the best thing she could do was stay put, she had no idea which way Bubblegum had gone, but surely the other girl would come back for her once she realised she’d left her behind.

It wasn’t like being on the surface at all. On the surface she wouldn’t have been buried under a hundred feet of concrete and steel, she’d have been able to run for open ground. If there were mutants down here – and she immediately hated herself for imagining that – being able to outrun them would mean nothing if she found herself in a dead end. On the surface at least she could make an attempt to climb the wall or fence or whatever was blocking her path. Down here climbing was pointless.

“There’s not any mutants, they’re all gone,” Marceline muttered to herself firmly. “They couldn’t have gotten in here anyway.”

Suddenly, a light snapped off at the end of one of the corridors, shrouding it in darkness. Marceline thought it might have been the corridor they had come down originally but she couldn't be sure. A few seconds later, another switched off, then another, as if the pitch-blackness at the end of the corridor was a living thing that was creeping towards her. She wasn't afraid of the dark, had never been afraid of it, but since she was standing in bright light her darkvision was useless so she had no idea how or why the lights might be switching off… or if someone or something was responsible. If there was anything using the approaching darkness to stalk her, she would be blind to it until it emerged.

As another light went off, now barely thirty feet away, Marceline's nerve broke and she turned tail and ran.

 

o.o.o.o.o

Fifteen minutes later, Marceline was hopelessly, hopelessly lost in the metal labyrinth. She'd run through corridors lined with doors and open spaces alike, catching sight of furniture and objects but not stopping to examine them. She was starting to wish she could get out of the light that constantly followed her, electric bulbs flaring into life above her as if she was trapped in a bubble of bright illumination, spotlighted for the convenience of anything that might be following her.

If she could just get out of the light, her eyes would adjust and she'd be able to see along the darkened corridors, but no matter which way she went, everywhere she stepped was immediately lit by harsh fluorescence which made the shadows impenetrable walls of sooty black.

Then, as she turned a corner, she skidded to a halt with a yell of shock as she almost crashed into another figure. Then she realised it was Bubblegum, and in sheer relief she flung her arms around the other girl and hugged her with the merciless tightness of adrenaline-fueled fear. Bubblegum seemed to hesitate for a moment as if she wasn't sure how to react, then hugged her back.

"Uhm... are you okay?" the pink girl asked awkwardly. "I thought you were right behind me, but when I looked round you'd gone and you weren't at the cafeteria when I went back."

"I'm fine!" Marceline replied, too quickly. She felt ridiculous now, since she was doing a terrible job of convincing the other girl that she wasn't afraid of everything as Bubblegum seemed so quick to assume. "This place is just really creepy okay? And the lights go out by themselves." Marceline immediately kicked herself for saying the last part, having Bubblegum think she was scared of the dark was the last thing she needed.

"Oh, they do that to save power," the pink girl explained. "All of the corridor and communal spaces have motion sensors on the lights so they're triggered by movement. They go off after fifteen minutes if they don’t sense anything else. Only the bedrooms have light switches."

If Marceline had thought that she couldn't feel any more stupid, she'd have been wrong. There had been nothing in the darkness besides her imagination. Realising that she still had the other girl clutched in her arms, she let go of her and pulled away. "Sorry. But this place is totally creepy," she repeated. "It feels haunted."

"Haunted?" Bubblegum looked at her strangely. "How could it be haunted? Nobody ever lived here."

"That's why it feels haunted!" Marceline snapped back at her. "Like... like there's ghosts of the people who should have lived here. They'd still have been alive if they'd lived here."

"That really doesn't make sense you know," Bubblegum replied. "Hauntings are commonly believed to be the residual presence of dead people lingering in the places where they lived and died, particularly if there was a violent or traumatic event that caused their deaths. Kind of like echoes. Nobody ever lived or died here, ergo it can't possibly be haunted."

“Well… I just don’t like it then!” Marceline said defensively. “Like, if any mutants or anything got in, where would you run to? You’d be trapped.”

“There aren’t any mutants. And nothing can get through the door when it’s sealed.” Bubblegum seemed to have realised just how unnerved the other girl was, and now her tone was reassuring instead of sceptical. “I promise. Come on, we’ve got a way to go to get back to where we were going. You run really fast.” This time she took Marceline’s hand to lead her, and Marceline didn’t object. Truth be told, the physical contact was comforting, she was just glad that it was Bubblegum who’d initiated it.

 

o.o.o.o.o

Far away on the other side of the continent, Bubblegum would have been much less confident about the vault’s safety if she’d seen what had become of one of its sister facilities. In less than half an hour the huge titanium door had been wrenched out of its socket by skeletal hands and thrown aside, and the dozens of people within had been reduced to just one lone survivor who was running for his life.

Just as Marceline had feared, the motion-sensing lights made following the man easy for the creature that pursued him. Unlike the survivor, it didn’t set off any of the motion sensors, gliding sedately through darkened corridors after him, knowing he couldn’t escape.

It wasn’t a dead end that finished the man, it was misplaced footing as he tripped and fell. He was scrambling back to his feet when the creature caught up with him, and as he met its lurid green gaze he froze like a deer in headlights. And the next thing he knew, clawed skeleton hands had hooked into his shirt, lifting him bodily from the ground without apparent effort.

“Who are you?!” the survivor screamed, already resigned to the fact that pleading would be useless. He’d seen some of his former companions plead for mercy to this thing, and it hadn’t made a blind bit of difference from those who had screamed or cursed it.

The creature that Princess Bubblegum had named the Lich ignored the question, raising the struggling man until he was level with its face, then its skeletal jaw dropped open as it seemed to inhale. It wasn’t the clumsy soul stealing employed by the likes of Hunson Abadeer, the Lich took everything. Life, soul, warmth, breath, blood, every last scrap of potential that this man might have had, until all that it let drop was a dessicated husk loosely draped in faded and mildewed clothes.

The corpse shattered as it hit the floor, and the Lich drifted onwards, downwards, to where the vault’s reactor lay. If it had been capable of the emotion, it would have been glad that this facility had a nuclear reactor instead of geothermal like some of the others, but it was not. All it meant was that it wouldn’t need to return to one of the others instead.

It hadn’t been enough. The lives, hopes and dreams of the last enclave of surviving humans that it had been able to root out, and it still wasn’t enough. The bombs had been too efficient, too sudden, and too many of the places that should have sheltered humanity lay empty. By now it should have possessed enough power to easily breach the barriers between dimensions and step through to the Crystal Dimension or the Astral Plane to continue its depredations there until every last sign of life in the multiverse had been obliterated. But it still didn’t have enough power.

Reaching the reactor, the Lich drifted towards the reinforced lead housing of the core, and calmly tore it open, provoking a sudden and catastrophic nuclear meltdown. Coolant boiled, steam shrieked and nuclear fire exploded from the reactor room with the force of an atomic bomb, tearing through the vault like a hurricane and irradiating its rooms and corridors for centuries to come. At the centre of the nuclear maelstrom, the Lich floated effortlessly, not even buffeted by the force it had unleashed. Instead it lowered itself into the glowing pool of radioactive fuel and molten graphite, folding its arms across its chest as if composing itself to sleep.

It knew there were still things alive out there, but right now they were pitiful remnants, scattered survivors and animals, not worth its time. The old fool with the crown would be somewhere, but the crown guarded him jealously and would never let the Lich take him while it had a use for him. The girl too, but her despair at the loss of her only friend and guardian had been just as satisfying as her life would have been. No, the Lich knew it would have to wait now. Wait until the planet had begun to recover, until life emerged from hiding to re-establish itself on the surface. Wait until there was enough life to consume to reach full power.

It would take centuries at least. But to a deathless creature like the Lich, time was meaningless. It slept.


	8. The Rain

_And some things in life won't ever change_   
_There's a smell of a rusty chain_   
_And of love disappearing like an aeroplane_   
\- Roxette: “The Rain”

It was apparent that the rain wasn’t going to stop any time soon. Marceline had been watching it for at least an hour now and every time there was a lull in the downpour it only lasted for a minute or two before coming down even harder. She’d made herself coffee – something that Bubblegum had introduced her to along with tea –and returned to her bed to wait for the rain to slacken off.

Technically speaking it wasn’t a bed; she’d had absolutely no luck in getting the mattress she’d dragged all the way back from the vault a few days ago into the upper chamber of the tree, now she was using it as a makeshift sofa in the main chamber. Instead she’d brought up more blankets and pillows, also a new thing for her, to pile on top of her bedroll until she’d made herself a comfortable, if untidy, nest.

It had been a fortnight since Bubblegum had first shown her the vault, and over that time Marceline had been going back and forth between it and the tree. Bubblegum had said she was welcome to stay there if she wanted, but Marceline still found the place so creepy that even the temptation of sleeping in an actual bed hadn’t been enough to persuade her. Instead, she’d been dragging supplies back to the tree in the red wagon that Bubblegum had found for her in the vault, slowly turning it into more of a home than just a shelter.

It was a strange feeling, being able to sit wrapped in blankets, sipping a hot drink while she watched the rain fall. Not too long ago, Marceline would have been forging out into the downpour already to fetch water and look for food. And less than a month ago, she wouldn’t have had a shelter at all; she’d have been finding the driest spot to put her bedroll and waiting to travel onwards when the weather cleared. Even with Simon she’d never really stayed in one place for long, and despite herself she was starting to feel twitchy. Most of the supplies she’d brought back from the vault were all things that she’d be able to carry with her if she had to leave the tree since she still couldn’t quite get her head around the fact that she didn’t have to keep travelling.

Marceline didn’t have to wonder where her next meal was coming from either now; she had carted back several boxes of cans and previously unheard of luxuries like sugar and salt. It had been a long time since Marceline had last seen her reflection properly, but she could tell by looking at her hands that she was getting less bony, her knuckles didn’t seem to stick out as much now. She supposed that was a good thing, and it was nice not to be woken up by hunger. Marceline just couldn’t shake off the feeling that it wouldn’t last, either there would be some catastrophe that would force her to leave, or Bubblegum would disappear, locking her out of the vault. Though that was certainly better than the prospect of being locked IN it.

Thinking about the pink girl disappearing made Marceline distinctly uneasy. It wasn’t like Bubblegum had a magic crown that was making her crazy or anything, her appearance and behaviour never altered, and she’d never once called her Gunther. But still, she couldn’t help suspecting that one day she’d go to the ruined park and the other girl would be gone, without a trace.

“That’s stupid,” she told herself firmly. “She has all those little candy guys to look after so she wouldn’t leave even if she did decide she didn’t like me any more.” Marceline wasn’t sure exactly how or why Bubblegum might decide she didn’t like her any more, but then again it wasn’t like it had to make sense, she’d learned that from Simon.

Marceline hugged Hambo closer as she thought about the man who’d given him to her. Sometimes she wondered if maybe she should try finding him, even though she had no idea of how to even begin. Maybe he’d managed to shake off the crown’s influence, he always had in the past, and maybe now he was lost. The only clue she had, if clue it could even be called, was that the crown would have made him go someplace cold.

With a frustrated grunt, Marceline let her head drop onto the pillow. Even thinking about trying to find Simon was pointless; trying to track a man who was most likely crazy and could fly would be useless. And even if she did find him… would he even remember her?

Normally, Marceline would just have chewed her doubts over in her head until the more pressing business of survival distracted her, but now that she didn’t have to worry so much about the latter she had ample time for navel gazing. Then it hit her; she could talk to Bubblegum about this. She’d spent so long on her own that she’d gotten used to internalising her worries, but she was sure Bubblegum would listen. And she was smart, maybe she’d have ideas on how she could find Simon, where he might be, or whether what the crown had done to him could be fixed.

Getting to her feet and throwing off the blankets decisively, Marceline pulled on some clothes and climbed down into the tree’s main chamber. Picking up her bag, she filled her water flask from the purifier, made sure her journal was there, then headed out into the rain.

 

o.o.o.o.o

By the time Marceline reached the park in the ruined city, she was soaked to the skin and covered in mud and a slurry of rainwater and pulverised concrete. It didn’t really bother her, she was used to hiking in all weathers, but she did wish that she hadn’t slipped and fallen down one of the hills outside the city since her entire back and most of her hair was now muddy. Even though the city was lower down it still seemed better drained than the hills, the turf in the park squished unpleasantly beneath her feet but still felt firmer than the grasslands beyond the city.

Marceline really hoped that didn’t mean the vault was currently being flooded since Bubblegum had told her that most of the complex was located beneath the park. If the rainwater got in then, well, just one more reason why living underground was a stupid idea. But if Bubblegum was down there…

Unconsciously increasing her pace, Marceline reached the fountain to see that the little candy folk had set up little tent-like shelters to protect themselves from the rain. It looked like they were made of sheets from the vault, but the rain was rolling off them like plastic instead of soaking into the fabric. Marceline approached the shelters slowly, making sure she was in plain sight. Bubblegum had repeatedly told her not to frighten the little creatures and while Marceline wasn’t sure why that was so important she figured that she owed the pink girl more than enough to comply with what was a reasonable request.

Reaching the shelters, Marceline slowly knelt down to look under the canopies and saw that the candy folk were gathered around Jib who seemed to be telling a story. Whatever it was, it seemed to involve a lot of gesturing with the hawk feather he’d had the first time she’d seen him, and his companions were finding it hilarious.

“Uhm… hey guys.” The candy folk turned at the sound of Marceline’s voice, and several waved at her cheerfully. They’d seen her often enough to know that she meant them no harm, and their mother seemed to like her. “Where’s Bubblegum?”

In response to Marceline’s question, all of the candy folk sprang to their collective feet and started to point and gesture wildly while jabbering at her in their tiny voices. But while Bubblegum understood them perfectly, Marceline wasn’t so lucky.

“Hey, one at a time guys,” Marceline couldn’t help giggling at them, even though the little creatures were being the opposite of helpful. Jib squeaked something that sounded commanding, and the other candy folk settled down as he moved forwards to stand in front of Marceline, gesturing towards the general direction of the vault with his feather and squeaking high pitched words at her.

“Meer… Vot… Een.” At first the sounds were gibberish, but Marceline now knew that they were words, just being spoken much faster and higher than normal. Mentally playing them back to herself, Marceline deciphered them into what she thought was an answer.

“You said that ‘mother’s in the vault, Marceline’?” she asked, and Jib nodded, followed by an outburst of affirmative squeaks from the other candy folk. “Thanks guys, I’m gonna go see her.” Getting up, noticing that now her knees were almost as muddy as her back, Marceline headed for the building that contained the entrance to the underground complex.

The door to the building wasn’t locked, so Marceline let herself inside but was confronted by exactly what she’d seen on her first visit, a mostly featureless metal room with no sign of the ladder leading down to the actual entrance. Then she remembered Bubblegum saying something about keeping the ladder hatch closed so that the candy people wouldn’t fall down the hatch, and guessed that she did that when she was inside as well. Marceline wondered what would happen if whatever the other girl was using to open the hatch from the other side broke, then shuddered and pushed that thought away, occupying herself by looking around the room instead.

It took all of five minutes for Marceline to decide that apart from the computers, which she’d left alone, there was nothing of interest in the building. Plain brick walls, plain metal floors, nothing else except for the skeletons which she hadn’t disturbed either. Going back to the door, she investigated it without much interest, only a vague curiosity as to how Bubblegum had gotten it open. It had been painted on the outside, but on the inside she could see that it was made of metal, and it felt solid.

It had been locked at some point, since the doorframe had three circular holes for bolts along its length, and a further two in the top and bottom of the frame. The bolts were still in place on the door, but had been retracted into it so someone had unlocked it. Maybe the skeletons? Well, when they’d been alive anyway.

Going behind the counter, Marceline gingerly reached out to move one of the larger skeletons to one side. She wasn’t afraid, she knew they couldn’t hurt her, but she didn’t like to disturb them. As the skeletal hand shifted, it revealed a tarnished, oddly shaped key which Marceline picked up. Then she wondered why there were no other skeletons, if the people who’d came here first had left the door unlocked, couldn’t others have gotten in as well? Or animals? She supposed that they could have locked it behind them, but if that was the case, how had Bubblegum managed to get in?

Going back to the door, Marceline wiped the dust and grime off it to find that it had three round locks, one at the side and one each at the top and bottom. The key fit perfectly into the first one she tried, but refused to budge one way or the other. She tried the handle as well, but it remained equally jammed. Trying the other locks didn’t do any good either, none of them would move. As Marceline removed the key from the top lock, a shower of small flakes and fragments of something came with it, which made her wonder if they were corroded.

Picking up a few of the fragments, Marceline frowned as she saw that they definitely weren’t rust, they were bright pink, like Bubblegum’s hair. Like the stuff she’d seen ingrained into the treads on the ladder.

“Weird…” she muttered, then looked up as she heard a metallic clunk and hiss. The hatch in the floor had retracted, and Marceline could hear footsteps coming up the ladder. Shutting the door, she put the key in her pocket as Bubblegum’s head emerged from the shaft.

“Marceline!” The other girl sounded surprised, but happy to see her, stopping her climb and leaning her elbows on the floor. “Are you here for more supplies? I found more canisters of gas for that camp stove, it would totally be better for cooking than the fire you’re using, at least for stuff you’re not roasting anyway…” Her words trailed off as she took a better look at the other girl. “You’re soaking! Is it still raining?”

“Uh, yeah.” Marceline thought the answer would have been obvious, but replied anyway. “I just… uhm… wanted to talk? If that’s okay anyway,” she added quickly, feeling increasingly awkward now. It was one thing to talk to Hambo about her troubles, but now that she was talking to someone who could actually answer she felt uncomfortable.

“Of course it’s fine,” Bubblegum replied, not seeming to notice Marceline’s hesitance. “But you need to get a hot bath and some dry clothes first, you must be freezing!”

“I’m fine!” Marceline protested, though she was aware that her clothes and hair were still dripping rainwater everywhere. “It’s not like I’ve never gotten wet before, jeez.”

“Well, now you’re wet AND muddy, so I’m not talking to you if you don’t go for a bath.” Folding her arms against the floor, Bubblegum glared at the other girl stubbornly. “You could get sick.”

Marceline rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Okay, fine. If it’ll keep you happy…”

 

o.o.o.o.o

Much like the rest of the vault, the bathrooms adjoining the bedrooms were spotlessly clean with a faint metallic smell from the pipes carrying hot water. Marceline was watching as Bubblegum filled a large white tub with hot water that was foaming violently and smelled of flowers. Looking at it with extreme suspicion, Marceline poked a cautious hand into the scented bubbles, then snatched it back. “Why is the water doing that? Is it safe?”

“Yes,” Bubblegum replied, testing the water in the tub with one hand. “It’s just bubble bath.”

“Bubble bath?” Marceline sniggered at the name. “Is it named after you or something?”

“Of course not,” Bubblegum’s voice made it clear that she thought the answer was obvious. “Bubble bath has been around for a lot longer than I have. Haven’t you ever had one?”

“No,” Marceline replied, honestly. “I don’t actually think I’ve ever even had a bath…”

The look she got from Bubblegum in response to that statement was one of outright horror. “Then… how did you ever wash yourself?”

“Warm water and a cloth. It’s not like I had a vault of my own or anything,” Marceline’s tone was defensive; clearly Bubblegum had no idea what survival was like for those who didn’t have access to magical pre-war supplies and technology. Marceline was still amazed that hot water came out of a faucet here without having to be boiled.

“Oh, yeah.” Bubblegum sounded slightly apologetic, clearly she’d realised the same thing. “Well, that should be about right now.” Shutting off the faucet, the pink girl moved towards the door. “There’s a towel on the rail, I’ll find you some dry clothes.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Marceline sounded slightly worried, remembering the last time that the other girl had left her alone in the vault.

“Uhh, yeah,” Bubblegum replied, again as if it was obvious. “I’m not watching you take a bath, that would be distasteful. I’ll just be in the next room.” With that she left, closing the door behind her. After a moment, Marceline shrugged and started to peel her wet clothes off, throwing them onto the towel rail. As she moved to step into the bath, a movement caught the corner of her eye and she looked round to see herself reflected in the mirror over the sink.

A thin, grey-skinned girl with a tangled mane of black hair looked back at her, eyes narrowing in disbelief. Since she’d last seen her reflection, which had been years ago in a ruined store, she’d gotten much taller and her hair was much longer, even the points on her ears seemed to have lengthened. She didn’t look like a little girl any more, but she didn’t look like the vague memories she had of her mother either. She remembered her mother having long black hair like hers, but her skin had been pink and her ears hadn’t been pointed. Maybe that meant she looked more like her father. She didn’t like that thought at all.

Heading back over to the bath, Marceline cautiously dipped one foot into it. The water was warm, but not too hot, so she stepped into it properly and slowly sat, then leaned back against the tub. She couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like this, the warm water was soothing against her skin and muscles, making her feel drowsy. Even her discomfort at being inside the vault was fading; the flowery scent of the bubbles reminded her of being in the grasslands. Tipping her head back against the lip of the bath, Marceline relaxed and closed her eyes.

 

o.o.o.o.o

When she opened them again, the water had cooled to lukewarm and the bubbles had dissipated somewhat. Realising she’d been asleep, but not knowing how long for, Marceline hurriedly splashed her face with water and grabbed the soap Bubblegum had left for her, quickly running it over her body and noticing as she did that the water of the bath was decidedly murky now. It really had been a long time since she’d last washed properly.

Within a few minutes, she had scrubbed herself properly and also gotten soap in her eyes and up her nose. Draining the tub, she stumbled over to the sink with her eyes half-closed and ran the faucet, using the clean water to rinse her stinging eyes. Grabbing the towel, she rubbed her face vigorously, then started to dry herself, slightly revolted by the overly large amount of dead skin she was rubbing off.

Looking back at her reflection in the mirror, Marceline saw that her skin seemed brighter now, the grey tint more pronounced. She really had needed a bath. Drying her hair as best as she could, Marceline wrapped the towel around herself then went to the door, opening it slightly and poking her head around it self-consciously.

The next room was one of the bedrooms in the complex, dominated by a double bed but also containing a wardrobe, dresser and a desk with a computer which Bubblegum was sitting at. The pink girl seemed to be absorbed in whatever was on the screen, occasionally tapping at the keyboard in front of her, and didn’t seem to hear the door opening.

“Hey,” Marceline called. “That’s me done now, I think I fell asleep. Have I been in there long?”

“Hmm?” Bubblegum seemed to snap out of a trance at the sound of Marceline’s voice, and turned towards her. “Oh, uhm… nearly two hours? I got you some clothes.” She pointed at the bed, where she’d laid out jeans, a white vest and a plaid shirt along with underwear.

“Thanks,” Marceline replied, grabbing the clothes and retreating back into the bathroom to get dressed. Despite her earlier protests, she couldn’t deny that she felt so much better in clean, dry clothes, especially now that she was clean herself. Going back into the bedroom she saw that Bubblegum had returned her attention to the computer, but this time she looked around as the door opened.

“Uhm, there’s actually something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now,” Bubblegum began, shifting awkwardly in her seat. “Is Princess Bubblegum really a stupid name?”

Marceline blinked, out of all the questions the pink girl could have asked, she hadn’t been expecting that one. She moved round the bed to sit on the corner closest to the desk and shrugged. “Well, it’s kind of weird but when I said it was stupid it was just because you’d surprised me. I don’t really think it’s stupid.”

“But it’s weird?” Bubblegum pressed. “It’s just… I thought it was my name, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Well, what are you princess of?” Marceline asked. “Princess of the candy people?”

“I thought Princess was just a name…” Bubblegum replied, looking confused. “Do I have to be a princess of something to use it?”

“Uhh…” Having to explain something to Bubblegum rather than vice-versa was a new experience for Marceline, to the extent that she was starting to wonder whether she was the one that was wrong, and Princess was a name. “I think it’s more like a title?” she offered. “You know, like professor or doctor or something. Like, if I was a princess I’d be Princess Marceline Abadeer.”

“You’d have three names?” Bubblegum still seemed bewildered. “How many names do you need?”

“No, princess would just be a title,” Marceline repeated. “My name is Marceline Abadeer, Marceline is my first name and Abadeer is my surname. What about you?”

The other girl seemed to think that over for a few seconds, frowning, then shook her head. “I don’t think I have a first name, Bubblegum must be my surname. Should I have a first name?”

“Well, yes.” Marceline replied. “You must have one, what did your parents call you?”

“Iiiii… don’t remember.” Bubblegum shifted uncomfortably as she spoke. “So I need a new one. What should it be?” She looked at Marceline expectantly, and the other girl started in surprise.

“Wait, you want me to give you a name?” Marceline’s voice was incredulous. “Can’t you think of one yourself?”

“The last one I thought of was Princess,” Bubblegum replied, folding her arms. “So could you at least suggest some?”

“Uhhhhh…” Running one hand through her tangled hair, Marceline searched her memory for names. She remembered quite a few from the fairy-tale book, but only the ones that had belonged to the silly princesses in those stories.

Then the name ‘Betty’ sprang out at her, she remembered that one from Simon… she had been someone very important to him but he didn’t like to talk about her. Most of the time he’d said her name, he’d been sleeping. Sometimes he’d also been crying. She decided that she didn’t want Bubblegum to have a name that reminded her of that. “Bonnie,” Marceline suggested, remembering it from a song that Simon had sung to her when she was small, something about being over the ocean. “It means ‘pretty’,” she added.

“Bonnie,” Bubblegum repeated, trying it out. “Isn’t that a bit short?”

“Uhm, maybe, let me think…” Gazing up at the ceiling, Marceline cast her mind back again, trying to remember the name of the princess from the story about the wicked servant who got put in the barrel of nails. Then, suddenly, a different memory surged to the surface.

_“This is another one you must never, ever eat, Marcy.” Simon’s voice was serious as he pointed at the red and black berries on the shrub. “It’s called deadly nightshade, or belladonna, and the poison in it will kill you. Do you understand?_

_“Yes, Simon,” Marcy replied. “Why is it called belladonna as well?”_

“Belladonna,” Marceline said as she returned to the present. “It means ‘beautiful lady’. Because the Italians had some weird ideas about women back then,” she added, remembering Simon’s explanation of the name.

“That’s the other name for deadly nightshade!” The pink girl sounded slightly offended by the suggestion. “Definitely not.”

“Fiiiiiine,” Marceline sighed, then thought briefly. “What about Bonnibel then? That would mean ‘pretty pretty’,” she added with a giggle. She hadn’t meant the suggestion seriously, but Bubblegum brightened as she repeated it.

“Bonnibel. That works. So, that would make me Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum then?”

There was a pause, then Marceline sniggered and began to laugh. “Bonnibel Bubblegum. That sounds so weird!”

“Well I like it,” Bubblegum huffed. Marceline kept laughing anyway.


	9. Rewind The Film

_So rewind the film again_   
_I'd love to see my joy, my friends_   
_Yes, rewind the film again_   
_So I can fall asleep content_   
\- Manic Street Preachers: “Rewind The Film”

"Ewwwwww! What IS that?" Marceline yelped, recoiling as what felt like cold slime oozed into her scalp and started to slowly run down the back of her neck. "It's gross!"

"No, it’s conditioner," Bubblegum corrected her as she started to work it into the other girl's tangled hair. "Once it's soaked in I might be able to get that comb out."

The item in question was a plastic, fine-toothed comb that was currently firmly stuck in one of the many mats in Marceline's long hair. After visiting the vault for another bath, having decided that she quite liked them, Marceline had attempted to detangle her wet hair. In retrospect, it had been a mistake. Especially when Bubblegum had found her attempting to wrestle the comb back out while yelling in pain.

"It still feels gross," Marceline muttered, shuddering involuntarily as she felt a droplet of the stuff streak down her spine. "And I'd have gotten it out eventually," she added rebelliously.

"Once you'd torn a few chunks out of your scalp you mean," the pink girl replied, taking hold of a now-slippery handful of the hair around the trapped comb and slowly working the teeth back and forth to free it. "Now keep still."

Muttering to herself, Marceline glared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror from where she sat on the metal bench that seemed to be part of every bathroom in the complex. Her hair looked lank and greasy now that Bubblegum had rubbed that gunk into it, hardly what she'd call an improvement. Then she yelped as the other girl tugged sharply at the comb. "Ow! Bonnie!"

"Ugh, did you EVER brush this?" Bubblegum asked in exasperation as she tried to untangle the hopelessly stuck item.

"I kind of had other things to worry about," the grey-skinned girl grumbled as Bubblegum tugged at the comb. "Simon used to brush it for me sometimes, but that was years ago. Ow!" She tried to tug away as the comb caught on another mat. "That hurts!"

"Well either I get all these knots out, or I shave your head," Bubblegum said firmly. "Because if you can't comb your hair, you'll get lice. I'm pretty sure those still exist."

"Yes Bubblemom," Marceline groaned sarcastically. "Actually that's a pretty good name for you. We should call you that instead of Bonnibel."

"Very funny," Bubblegum sniffed haughtily. “Now brace yourself."

"Brace myself for whaaaAAAARGH!" The sentence turned into a scream as Bubblegum finally tore the comb out of Marceline's hair, taking a handful of tangled strands and a couple of knots with it. “You did that on purpose!”

Bubblegum was pulling the clumps of hair out from between the teeth of the comb. “Of course it was on purpose,” she replied. “That’s why I told you to brace yourself.”

Marceline didn’t respond, scowling as she gingerly prodded at her tender scalp and then grimacing as she got greasy conditioner all over her fingers. “Now can I wash this gunk out?” she asked irritably.

“Of course not!” the pink girl replied, sounding horrified. “Not until I’ve brushed it in and let it set, this is going to take a while…” Going over to the cabinet in the corner, Bubblegum opened it and took out a couple of brushes and a pair of nail scissors, then turned back towards the bench to see that the other girl had vanished and the door was open. “Marceline, you get back here right now!”

o.o.o.o.o

An hour later, Marceline was glowering into the mirror as she sat on the chair Bubblegum had dragged through from the bedroom and set in front of it. In retrospect, trying to run away from the pink girl when she was in the vault and not on the surface had been a bad idea. She hadn’t been scared this time, she’d just wanted to get away from Bubblegum and find a pair of scissors to deal with her hair herself before the other girl could do any more to it.

Instead, she’d ended up running in circles in the vault’s infuriatingly similar corridors, and the only reason Marceline knew she’d been going in circles was because she’d passed the canteen three times. It hadn’t taken Bubblegum long to find her, as the pink girl seemed to have an equally infuriating mental map of the entire complex, and with a combination of cajoling, (‘please?’) persuasion (‘I’ll be gentle’) and threats (‘you’ll get lice!’) Bubblegum had managed to browbeat her into compliance.

At least the pink girl had been honest when she’d said that she’d be gentle. Bubblegum had been careful not to tug at Marceline’s hair too much as she drew the wide paddle-brush through it, occasionally using the comb to work out particularly stubborn knots and cutting out the worst mats with the nail scissors. The metal floor around the chair was now littered with strands and clumps of pitch-black hair.

Throughout the entire ordeal the pink girl had been humming happily, while Marceline maintained a stony silence apart from the occasional grunt when the brush caught in her hair or on one of her ears. Bubblegum had been working her way through the other girl’s hair in small sections, detangling and brushing each one thoroughly then braiding it. As a result, most of Marceline’s hair was now hanging in limp, slimy plaits around her head. It looked ludicrous.

“Are you almost done now?” Marceline growled, watching out of the corner of her eye as Bubblegum ran the brush through the last section of her hair in smooth, regular strokes. “Please tell me you’re not leaving me like this afterwards.”

“Don’t be silly,” Bubblegum replied with a giggle, setting the brush down on the lip of the sink and deftly braiding the untangled locks. “I’ll give it another ten minutes once I’m done with this bit, then rinse your hair out and shampoo it. Then I’ll brush it out again and dry it, it’ll look so much better!”

“Ugh, who has TIME for this kind of junk?” Marceline groaned, tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling as Bubblegum finished the last braid and fastened it with a hair tie. “I could have been doing things that are actually useful today.”

“Well, you should make time,” Bubblegum told her, rinsing conditioner off the brushes and comb under the faucet. “You could have really nice hair if you just looked after it.” Strangely, the pink girl looked more envious than disapproving.

“What’s wrong with your hair?” Marceline asked curiously. “Yours always looks nice.” It was true; Bubblegum’s pink hair always seemed to be in perfect order, never messy or wild, always in a single sleek and smooth mass. It didn’t behave the same as Marceline’s hair either, like it was somehow heavier and denser, and she never seemed to lose any. Strands of black hair were scattered everywhere inside Marceline’s tree and even in the places in the vault that she visited regularly, but she’d never seen a single pink one.

“Mine’s… kind of samey,” the other girl replied, somewhat evasively. “Yours seems to have more life to it.”

“I thought you said it was a mess?” Marceline was turning her head from side to side, intrigued by the way her braided hair was swinging in response; it felt strange and heavy.

“No, it WAS a mess,” Bubblegum corrected her. “It’ll be much nicer when it’s rinsed and brushed out, wait and see.”

With extreme bad grace, Marceline waited, submitting to Bubblegum’s pushing and pulling with sullen grunts. Once the pink girl was sure that the goop in her hair had been there long enough she pulled her over to the bath and made her kneel next to it with her head hanging over the side as she unbraided her hair, then detached the shower head from the wall and rinsed it thoroughly.

Marceline’s wet hair was now hanging limply across her face like a curtain, completely flat and straight which was a new experience for her. She didn’t resist as Bubblegum pulled her back to her feet, and stood glowering at her balefully through a gap in her hair. The other girl took one look at her and started laughing.

“Sorry Marcy,” Bubblegum giggled. “It’s just… the glare totally doesn’t work with your hair like that. I’ll go get a towel.”

Marceline was glad that her hair hid her expression at that moment. Nobody had called her Marcy since Simon… nobody had called her Marcy apart from Simon. And hearing it again was bittersweet, it reminded her of how much she still missed him. But hearing Bubblegum say it made her feel strange, and not in an unpleasant manner. It made her want to smile as much as missing Simon made her want to cry.

Everything suddenly went dark as Bubblegum returned and threw a towel over Marceline’s head. She raised her hands to it to start rubbing her hair dry, but the pink girl quickly pulled them away.

“Don’t do that, you’ll just tangle it again! Let me…” Taking hold of the towel, Bubblegum began to carefully pat the other girl’s hair dry, though Marceline surreptitiously grabbed one corner of the fabric to rub her eyes. Then Bubblegum made her sit in front of the mirror again and started to brush her damp hair. But this time the bristles slid through it easily and didn’t catch on anything. To Marceline’s surprise, it actually felt quite pleasant.

She had actually started to drowse when an unfamiliar noise snapped her back to full wakefulness as a blast of hot air washed across her scalp. Marceline looked around to see that Bubblegum was now wielding something that looked sort of like a big silvery gun, but all it fired was heated air.

“It’s a hairdryer,” Bubblegum said before she could ask, raising her voice so that Marceline could hear her over the whine of the appliance. “You’ve got a lot of hair; waiting for it to dry would take ages.”

“If you say so.” Closing her eyes again, it didn’t take long for the added warmth and gentle strokes of the brush to send Marceline into a doze again. She woke with a start fifteen minutes later to find that her head had fallen backwards over the chair and she was now staring up at the ceiling. Bubblegum had switched the hairdryer off, and was now using a different, softer brush on Marceline’s hair. Lifting her head, Marceline looked at her reflection again… and stared.

_…her mother smiled at her as she lifted Marceline into her arms, her long black hair loose and unbound, falling in smooth ebony waves over her shoulders…_

Marceline blinked, and was looking at herself again, though she almost didn’t recognise herself in the mirror. Her hair was no longer a wild, tangled mane, now it fell in the same straight, sleek flows as her mother’s had. And it no longer seemed soot-black either, as she moved her head the bathroom lights brought out highlights of deep purple and midnight blue, like the sheen on a raven’s wing.

“I told you it would look really nice,” Bubblegum said, still running the soft brush over the back of Marceline’s head. “You’d better not get it all tangled like that again, or I really will shave your… hey!” She started to protest as Marceline stood up abruptly, but fell silent as the other girl stepped around the chair and hugged her.

“Thank you,” Marceline said into the pink girl’s shoulder. “This is much better.”

“Uhm… well… just brush it okay?” Bubblegum replied, blushing. “Before you go to bed and when you get up in the morning. And when you wash it. Or it gets wet. Or when it’s been really windy.” There was a pause as Bubblegum considered what she’d said. “Jeez, maybe you were right. Who DOES have time for this stuff?”

o.o.o.o.o

_“Oh, mon cher. I guess zese is goodbye.”_

_“No, not goodbye. Let's say: Farewell!”_

“This movie is dumb,” Marceline said into her pillow, lying face-down on a sleeping bag in front of the large screen. “It’s been running for like two minutes, and I can already tell it’s going to be even dumber than that one with the guy who had scissors for hands. Why would you even make someone who had scissors for hands?”

“Well yes, the logic in that one escaped me.” Bubblegum was sitting beside her, brushing out Marceline’s hair which was spread out either side of her shoulders like dark wings. “I mean, I would have given him hands before brains, because giving something a brain when it has an assortment of edged weapons instead of hands is completely reckless and hardly ethical.”

Movie night had become something of a weekly ritual for the two girls over the months that had passed since they had first met. The vault was well-stocked with all sorts of entertainment equipment, including a small theatre that would have sat about thirty people. Instead, the chairs had been stacked around the walls and a large space directly in front of the screen had been covered with blankets and pillows. It was almost as comfortable as Marceline’s makeshift bed back in the tree.

The two of them had been watching their way through the supply of video tapes that the vault was also stocked with, and most of what Marceline had learned so far was that before the war everything was really bright and sunny and also that Simon had probably been right when he’d said the book was better. Despite that, she still enjoyed movie night, if only because Bubblegum was there with her and usually equally critical of what they were watching. Somehow the vault didn’t seem so creepy when the other girl was beside her; even sleeping there wasn’t so bad when she knew Bubblegum was there.

The procedure for movie night was always the same. Marceline would arrive in the park around dusk, while Bubblegum was making sure that her candy folk were settled for the night. They’d tried bringing a couple of them to begin with, but the little creatures had been bored by the movies and simply gone to sleep. Then they’d go down into the vault, pick a couple of interesting-sounding videos, get some food and settle down in front of the screen. Bubblegum had also introduced Marceline to another hot drink called cocoa, which she thought she remembered Simon mentioning once or twice. It tasted amazing, warm and sweet, and usually made her fall asleep halfway through the second movie. And if it didn’t, the hair brushing usually did instead.

Bubblegum had shown Marceline how to put her hair in a ponytail or braid to keep it out of the way, but on movie night the pink girl insisted on brushing it properly. Which Marceline didn’t mind at all, she found that brushing it herself was a tiresome task that she did extremely grudgingly but Bubblegum seemed to enjoy it. It felt good having someone else brush it, especially when they were gentle like the pink girl was; Marceline had a tendency to pull the tangles out by force when she brushed it. Sometimes the other girl would stroke her hair and run her fingers through it when she was done, and Marceline found herself liking that even more than the brushing.

Usually they found themselves paying more attention to each other than the movies, except in the case of ones that really got their interest. Marceline had liked the one with the giant lizards that were called dinosaurs; Bubblegum had explained to her how they had once lived on the planet before humans ever came along. Marceline had asked if that meant they’d come back now that humans were mostly gone, but apparently it wasn’t as simple as that.

Most of the time they would just talk, often about what the world was like before the war since that’s what most of the movies seemed to focus on. Bubblegum had asked Marceline about everything she remembered from the old world in exhausting detail, but strangely didn’t seem to have any memory of it herself, even though she seemed to be the same age. Despite that, Bubblegum had learned a lot from the vault’s computers and books, whenever Marceline had questions about things in the movies that she didn’t understand, like pets for a start; the pink girl could usually explain them.

Eventually, on their ninth movie night, Marceline had managed to work up the courage to talk about Simon. Bubblegum had sat and listened, running the brush through Marceline’s hair in slow, relaxing strokes as the other girl talked in slow, halting sentences. But Bubblegum couldn’t explain why the crown had made him crazy, magic crowns definitely weren’t covered in the vault’s archives. Her own crown, while it protected her from the monster she called the Lich, was distinctly unmagical. She’d let Marceline wear it, and it hadn’t spoken to her, or changed her, or done anything. It had just been an inert band of metal around her head.

Bubblegum also didn’t know where Simon could be, apparently the north and south of the planet had been covered in permanent ice and snow before the war, but the pink girl wasn’t sure if that was still the case. She’d shown Marceline a map, much larger than the one Simon had possessed, of the way the world had been before the war and pointed out the places that were cold, but none of them were anywhere near the ruined city, and Marceline hadn’t known the name of the one Simon had left her in. Bubblegum had tried to sound optimistic, pointing out paths Marceline could take if she wanted to try going north, or likely locations of the city where she’d last seen him, but her eyes and expression told Marceline that that the other girl thought that finding Simon was impossible.

She’d cried then, burying her face in her pillow to hide it, pretending that she was asleep. Bubblegum hadn’t been fooled and had lain down beside her so that their faces were level and put an arm around Marceline’s shoulders. She’d said that maybe Simon would have been happy knowing she had a home now, and that she didn’t have to worry about food, or mutants, or finding shelter. Marceline knew that was true, she remembered how Simon had taught her all the survival skills he could, always with ending with ‘you’ll need to know this if I’m not here’. He wouldn’t have wanted her to plunge off into the wasteland on a near-futile search; he’d have wanted her to stay where it was safe.

Eventually, Marceline had turned her head to look at Bubblegum, and to her utter surprise the other girl had tears in her eyes as well. For a moment, just a moment, Marceline had wanted to kiss her like they did in some of the movies they watched, but then Bubblegum had laughed nervously and wiped her eyes and the moment was gone. Marceline had felt strange about it afterwards, not understanding where the thought had come from or why. It was enough that Bubblegum was here with her. Kissing would be weird.

Now they were on their fifteenth movie night, and though the animated people on the screen were boring her, their kissing was starting to make Marceline wonder if kissing Bubblegum would really be so weird. In the movies people always seemed to enjoy it. Were you supposed to kiss your friends? She remembered that Simon had sometimes kissed her when she was little, but that had been different, always a light peck on her forehead which she was sure she remembered her mother doing as well. In the movies they always seemed to kiss on the mouth, and for a lot longer.

Marceline snapped out of those thoughts as she felt a gentle tug on her hair, Bubblegum had finished brushing it and was now weaving it into something she called a French braid. “Shouldn’t I brush your hair sometime?” she asked curiously, turning her head towards the other girl. “Is it supposed to be a mutual thing?”

“Mine doesn’t need it,” Bubblegum replied. “I told you, it’s kind of... different.” From the way her pink hair was pooled beside her in a perfect circle instead of spilling across the blankets in a splayed mess like Marceline’s did when it was loose, that seemed to be true.

On a whim, Marceline reached out to touch it, and at first she thought it felt like her own hair did after Bubblegum put that conditioner gunk in it. Her fingers slid through it easily, and it felt silky-smooth and soft between them. Then she realised that she wasn’t leaving any trails through it, when she combed her fingers through her own hair they left tracks in it, at least until she pulled them out anyway. But when she stopped moving her hand through the other girl’s hair, it looked like she had her hand half-sunk into opaque pink water as Bubblegum’s hair seemed to mould around her fingers leaving no trace of where they’d moved through it.

“See?” Bubblegum didn’t seem at all perturbed by Marceline messing with her hair, even though she was now poking holes in it with one finger and watching as they immediately sealed up. “My hair is different. And boring.”

“It’s not boring!” Marceline protested, marking a large ‘M’ in its smooth pink surface and giggling as it disappeared. “Though it is pretty weird, yeah. Was it always like this?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Bubblegum shrugged dismissively. “But at least it means I don’t have to spend much time on it.”

Considering that, Marceline frowned. “Then how did you know all that stuff about how to get mine under control, if you never needed to do that with yours?”

“Because I read,” Bubblegum replied, as if that explained everything. Finishing her braiding on Marceline’s hair, she settled down beside her. “You want me to change the movie? I have no idea what’s even going on in this one now.”

Glancing at the screen which she’d barely been looking at, Marceline saw that the woman from before was now running through trees with some deer, but she had no idea how that related to the story, or what the story even was since she hadn’t been paying attention after the kissing at the start. “Yeah, change it. Movies about kissing are stupid.”

Bubblegum laughed at that, it might have been Marceline’s imagination by she thought the pink girl sounded slightly nervous as well. Going over to the stack of tapes, Bubblegum looked through them, then pulled one out to read the back of the box. “Oh hey, this one was written by the same guy that wrote the dinosaur film!”

“Let’s watch that one then.” The prospect of more dinosaurs made Marceline forget the troubling thoughts about kissing that were still confusing her. “What’s it called?”

Flipping the tape over, Bubblegum read the title. “It’s called Congo. Sounds weird.” Going over to the VCR, she ejected the current tape and replaced it with the new one then pressed play.

“…not as weird as kissing…” Marceline muttered under her breath as the film started, but she didn’t object as Bubblegum lay down beside her and leaned her head on her shoulder. After all, that wasn’t kissing.


	10. Strange Phenomena

_Soon it will be the phase of the moon_   
_When people tune in_   
_Every girl knows about the punctual blues_   
_But who's to know the power_   
_Behind our moves_   
\- Kate Bush: “Strange Phenomena”

In the vault's lab, Bubblegum was watching the tiny candy people she'd made that morning with concern. They were made of exactly the same materials as the others, but these ones were a fraction of the size, barely an inch high. The speed of the aging process was inversely proportional to their size, so they were already as mature as their larger siblings. Now she just had to wait and see if the worrying crystallisation starting to affect the ones in the park was due to age or environmental effects. These ones had never been out of the lab, or even the tray she'd set up for them, but chattered to each other, slept and ate just like the bigger ones.

Although she'd made these ones solely for research, Bubblegum loved them all the same. She was definitely getting better at this; her original attempts to create life had resulted in shambling sugar creatures that deteriorated after a few hours. The ones in the park above were over a year old now; they could learn and talk and seemed very social. But lately some of them had begun to limp and stumble. And when she'd examined them she'd found sugar crystals forming in their feet.

After taking copious amounts of notes in a frantic rush, though thankfully the little candy folk didn't seem to be in any pain as yet, Bubblegum had rushed down to the vault and immediately started looking through her textbooks. Some of them had been in the vault's library to begin with, but most of them she had collected from around the city over the years.

One thing she did miss about her original protoplasmic form was that it had been able to carry much more; she'd been able to just roll over as many books as she wanted and absorb them into herself then eject them back at the vault. And she also missed being able to split herself up into separate, independent portions because that had made exploring much, much easier and faster. Especially when she didn't have to worry about being crushed by a falling building since the rest of her would be fine. But that was the choice she'd had to make when she designed her current form; she'd had to pick between the convenience of her original form and the power of speech and opposable thumbs.

Thumbs definitely did make science easier, Bubblegum had to admit that. And she didn't think Marceline would have reacted so well to her if she was still sentient ooze. Granted, the first thing the other girl had done had been to hiss at her and run away, but she would probably have freaked out even more if she'd woken up to find her tree surrounded by pink protoplasm.

Then again, if she'd still been a mass of mutant candy Bubblegum doubted that she'd still be having strange, confusing and worst of all distracting thoughts about Marceline. Maybe her design for her human form had been a little too good, since she was now feeling some very human urges. She'd never wanted to kiss anyone when she was goo after all. Now the thought of that prospect kept creeping up on her at the most inconvenient times, like while she was trying to investigate the reasons her candy people were crystallizing for example.

Taking a deep breath, Bubblegum forcibly cleared her mind of that hormonal nonsense and focused back on her work. If her calculations were correct then right about now the miniature candy folk would be reaching an equivalent age to the larger ones so she needed to keep a close eye on them to watch for any changes, not think about Marceline.

A few minutes later one of the tiny figures tripped and fell while playing tag with three others, and when they came over to investigate one of them did the same. Lifting the first one gently, Bubblegum held it up to the light and saw what she’d been fearing, the beginnings of dense crystallization at the ends of its limbs. The tiny creature hung placidly in her grip, trusting her not to drop him or harm him. But she only just managed to stop herself from letting him go in shock as she saw the crystallization starting to spread.

It was like watching a chemical reaction, or a time-lapse of alum crystals growing. The darker shapes rapidly crept up the candy person’s legs and as Bubblegum set him down carefully she could see that he could no longer bend them. The little creature still didn’t seem to be in pain, though he was stumbling around with an odd, stiff-legged walk that made him look like he was on stilts. She scribbled down more notes quickly; obviously this was an age issue after all, and the accelerated aging of the tiny candy folk was making it develop much faster.

“…must be too much sugar and not enough glycerine…” Bubblegum muttered, noticing that more and more of the miniature candy people were displaying the same symptoms now. Oddly it seemed that the crystallization happened earlier depending on what colour they were; red and yellow were the first, green and blue were the last. But within half an hour all they were capable of was an awkward, stilted hobble. And then the first one toppled over, shattering into a small pile of red sugar.

Within the hour, all that Bubblegum was left with were a dozen heaps of coloured sugar. Although she’d managed to jot down some potential formulas for reversing the crystallization, the reaction had happened so fast that she hadn’t had time to synthesise any. And she had doubts about whether she would even be able to halt it if it was a natural process, like crystals forming in honey. At least it seemed to be a painless condition. They didn’t suffer.

Taking her notes and analysing both them and the time stamps she’d logged at each stage of the reaction, Bubblegum started sketching out a complex algorithm that would let her calculate how long the larger candy folk would have before complete crystallization. Either way, she’d need to start working on a potential cure as soon as possible. And if that didn’t work, well, it would be time to look at the base formula for creating the life serum again.

Bubblegum was so deeply involved in her equations that she never heard the footsteps echoing along the corridors, or Marceline yelling her name. It wasn’t until the lab door was thrown open with a clang that her attention was finally snapped away from the papers, and she looked up to see Marceline standing in the threshold, looking anxious and awkward all at once.

“Bonnie!” It had taken Marceline about twenty minutes to find her way from the entrance to the lab, and even then she’d only managed it because she’d been there several times with the pink girl already. Bubblegum had taught her the entrance code for the vault so she could let herself in and out, but it was still extremely unusual for her to come down of her own accord. “I need to talk to you, like right now…”

“What’s wrong?” It was obvious to Bubblegum that there was most definitely something wrong from the grey girl’s rapid breathing and the way her eyes were darting around nervously. Something was obviously troubling her. The dark hollows under her eyes suggested that she hadn’t slept well, and from the way she had one arm pressed into her lower abdomen it looked like she was in pain.

Marceline shifted awkwardly on the spot, not knowing how she could tell the other girl what the problem was in any way that she wouldn’t find distasteful. “There’s something wrong with me. Like, really, really wrong and I don’t know what it is and you’re smart so you might know but it’s totally gross and I think I’m going to be sick again…”

“Sick again? Did you eat something that wasn’t sealed properly or something?” Setting her notes down, Bubblegum went over to Marceline and put one hand on her forehead, feeling a damp sheen of sweat against her fingertips though the other girl didn’t seem to have a temperature. But her pupils were contracted and she was swaying slightly on her feet.

“I need to sit down,” Marceline said abruptly, and dropped down onto the floor, propping her back against the wall and pressing both arms into her stomach. “And it’s not something I ate! It’s… well, I’m bleeding. A lot.”

Bubblegum looked at the other girl oddly, unable to see any traces of blood on her skin or clothes. “Uhhhhh… did it stop or something? I don’t see any bleeding…”

“That’s because it’s coming from… somewhere I shouldn’t be bleeding from!” Groaning, Marceline pulled her knees against her chest, rocking slightly on her haunches. “And it hurts, and I don’t know why!”

Mentally running through a list of human ailments, which was much easier than figuring out what was wrong with her candy folk as she’d found plenty of textbooks on human health, Bubblegum quickly realised what the problem must be. “Oh. Uhm. Has this happened before?”

“NO!” Marceline yelled back at her, her face flushing with embarrassment from the way the other girl had made it sound like something she should know about. “I think I’d remember waking up in a pool of blood!”

“Then, uh…” Bubblegum rubbed one ear awkwardly, trying to think of a way to word this that wouldn’t be too distasteful. “Did your mom ever tell you about things that might make you bleed from… there?” Marceline’s response to that question was to look at her as if she’d grown an extra head.

“My mom died when I was three,” the grey girl said shortly, as if she was explaining this to a very small or stupid child. “I don’t remember her ever telling me anything about bleeding from a weird place for no reason.”

“Oh. Right.” Clearing her throat awkwardly, Bubblegum considered asking the other girl if Simon had ever explained human reproduction to her, but on consideration that was probably unlikely given the way Marceline was reacting. “Well, uhm, it’s a normal thing, don’t worry. There’s things in the vault you can use to absorb the blood from this kind of thing and it should be over in a few days.

Marceline stared at the pink girl for a few moments, looking horrified. “There’s stuff in the vault for THIS? Is this… something that happens a lot?”

“Generally once per lunar month,” Bubblegum replied, starting to drop into textbook mode. “It’s called menstruation, and it occurs at sexual maturity. Usually it happens around thirteen, but you were way underweight so that would have delayed the onset. It’s perfectly normal and nothing to worry about; it just means you can reproduce now.”

“I can do what now?” Marceline asked, bewildered, then groaned and shifted in pain.

“Have babies,” the other girl explained, and this time Marceline looked at her in outright horror.

“Why the… the breadballs would I ever want to do that?!” she exclaimed. “That’s stupid!”

“Sorry Marcy, but I didn’t invent human biology,” Bubblegum replied, though her voice was sympathetic. “It’s kind of pointless now anyway since you’d need a boy as well to have babies and we’re both girls, but it’s still gonna keep happening. Does it hurt?”

“No, it’s just fine,” Marceline replied through gritted teeth, sinking down onto her side. “I’m lying. It really, REALLY hurts.”

“Yeah, that can happen too,” Bubblegum said, running one hand in smooth, comforting circles around the other girl’s lower back, hearing her grunt softly in appreciation. “Then it’s called dysmenorrhea. It’s also normal.”

“I thought I was gonna die…” From the way Marceline’s voice was shaking, Bubblegum could tell she had been more frightened than she’d let on. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising, the pink girl supposed that waking up soaked in blood and in pain would generally not bode well for someone, especially if they had no idea what was happening to them. “Was it like this for you?”

“No,” Bubblegum admitted, truthfully. “I guess I was lucky.” Well, she supposed that never having gone through the same ordeal was lucky in a way, but really it was because she had engineered her human body not to have such distractions.

Marceline had curled up into a ball on the floor, making soft sounds of pain now and again. “I hate it. It’s gross. Is this really going to happen every month? Really?” For a moment she sounded hopeful, as if she thought Bubblegum might tell her it was just a one-time thing after all, she’d been joking about it coming back every month.

“It should do, yes. But, uhm…” There was a pause as Bubblegum racked her brains for something positive to say about it, she didn’t think that Marceline would particularly care for being told ‘now you’re a woman’ or anything like that. “It shows you’re healthy?” she said eventually. “And that you’re not malnourished any more.”

“Ugh. Can you just kill me now?” Marceline groaned, thumping her head against the metal floor. “This is worse than the time I drank pond water without boiling it first. At least that didn’t come back every month.”

“No, but how about I get you some painkillers and a heat pack and you can go lie in the movie room until you feel better?” Bubblegum stroked one hand through Marceline’s hair comfortingly, pleased to find that it was relatively tangle-free. “It should stop hurting eventually; some ibuprofen and a heat pack will help.”

“Mnph,” The sound was grouchy, but acquiescent. “I wanna watch the movie with dinosaurs.”

“Then you can have dinosaurs,” Bubblegum agreed as she helped the other girl to her feet. “Whatever makes you feel better.”

o.o.o.o.o

Marceline woke with a start as the movie credits started to roll; the last thing she remembered was that the guy in the suit was being eaten by the tyrannosaurus. The heat pack that Bonnie had given her, an odd gelatinous thing that immediately heated when she snapped a metal disc in the middle, was still pressed into her lower abdomen but had cooled and hardened. The pink girl had made her cocoa as well, it was cold now but Marceline drank it anyway.

Her belly and back still ached dully, but the pain was much less intense now; earlier it had felt like a fist clenching around her spine. Marceline still felt uncomfortably… sticky, but a quick look beneath the blanket showed that the blood hadn’t soaked through the pad Bonnie had given her. She made a face as she remembered what the blankets had been like back at the tree. Those were going to take some scrubbing when she got back.

She hadn’t slept well at all the previous night, woken by cramps and nausea and then when she’d noticed the blood in the early hours of the morning she’d been terrified. At the time she’d had no idea why she was bleeding and had assumed that something had gone horribly wrong inside her. Marceline had been too scared to try and go back to sleep, afraid that she’d bleed to death, but the cramps were so bad she didn’t want to move. Eventually, after several hours of not dying, she’d managed to haul herself to her feet, staunch the bleeding as best as she could, and head for the city in the hope that Bonnie would know what was happening. No wonder she’d fallen asleep.

Burying her face in her pillow, which was actually Bonnie’s pillow, Marceline inhaled its scent deeply. It smelled of sugar and strawberries and vanilla, the same as Bonnie did, and she found it somehow comforting. The pink girl had only stayed long enough to make sure she was comfortable and start the movie and then returned to whatever she’d been doing in the lab. Apparently it was really important, though Marceline had noticed that it wasn’t important enough to stop the other girl from fussing over her. It wasn’t that she minded being fussed over, far from it, it was just so long since she’d had someone to fuss over her that it made her feel awkward. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

Marceline looked up as she heard the door slide open, and saw Bubblegum walk in carrying a plate of muffins; the same kind she had brought with her the first time she’d followed Marceline back to the tree. “Hey, how are you feeling?” the pink girl asked as she saw that she was awake. “Hungry yet?”

Marceline hadn’t eaten anything earlier as her stomach had still been in knots; she’d felt like anything she ate would just come right back up. Now that she was in less pain however, she was starving. “Yes,” Marceline replied, pushing herself up into a sitting position as Bonnie sat beside her. “Did you just make these? I thought you said you had important stuff to do?”

“Well, mostly it was just thinking and making notes,” Bonnie replied. “Baking helps me focus.” Which was true; the measuring and kneading and shaping cleared her head and calmed her nerves, giving her a clean slate to work on. She had filled several pages of her notebook with formulas for various anti-crystallization serums in between baking stages and while all of them would require extensive testing it was a start at least.

Wolfing down one of the muffins, Marceline shifted slightly to lean against the other girl, awkwardly and nervously putting one arm around her in a one-sided hug. “Uhm… thanks Bonnie. Sorry I was all freaked out earlier, it was just that I had no idea what was happening and, uhm, hope I didn’t gross you out or anything.”

Bubblegum laughed gently at that, raising one hand to stroke the grey girl’s hair. “It’s not gross Marcy, it’s just reproductive biology. You didn’t know about it, so it’s not surprising you freaked out.” There was a pause as the pink girl considered her next words carefully. “Uhh, there are some books and stuff about it here if you want to read them. And I think there’s a video too.” The look on Marceline’s face was enough to tell Bubblegum exactly what she thought of those suggestions.

“Ewww, no, gross,” she replied, pulling a disgusted face. “All I need to know is that bleeding for five days every month is normal, I don’t wanna know anything else.”

Bubblegum was going to argue that Marceline would need to know these things if she was ever with a boy, but reconsidered when she realised that unless other survivors were out there, and she knew there were none in this city, Marceline would never meet one. Knowing that the thought of that pleased her made Bubblegum feel strange; it was irrational and yet she couldn’t deny it. “Well, okay then. But you should still look at them sometime,” she added, unable to quite shake the feeling she was being irresponsible. “You wanna stay tonight?”

“Yeah, okay,” Marceline barely had to consider the prospect. She wasn’t sure whether it was just those hormone things that Bonnie had talked about, but she really didn’t feel like spending the night alone back in the tree. “We could have movie night early.”

“Oh yeah, I found more tapes!” Running out of the room, Bubblegum returned a few moments later with another stack of videos. “These were in the library. Apparently they’re musicals? I think that means there’s singing.”

“Why would they be singing?” Marceline asked, bemused. “Are they movies about singing?”

“No, not exactly,” the pink girl replied. “It means that they sing about what’s going on instead of just doing it. Like, this one’s about teenagers like us,” Bubblegum said, holding up a video with a black-haired boy and blonde girl on the cover. “And I guess they sing about… teenage stuff?”

“What, you mean like we do all the time?” The sarcasm was practically dripping from Marceline’s voice. “Like this?” She immediately launched into a somewhat off-key melody, making up the words as she went along. “I woke up this morning and went to see my friend Bonnie, I was really worried ‘cause I was bleeding from my…”

“Marceline!” This time the pink girl was blushing furiously. “That IS distasteful!”

The grey girl’s laughter echoed along the corridors as she saw the look on her friend’s face. “It’s a work in progress. I need to think of a rhyme for it anyway. Maybe the movie will give me ideas.”

Muttering inaudibly, Bubblegum put the video into the player and started it, then settled down beside Marceline who was still giggling. “So distasteful…”


	11. The Man Comes Around

_Then the father hen will call his chickens home_   
_The wise man will bow down before the throne_   
_And at his feet, they'll cast the golden crowns_   
_When the man comes around_   
\- Johnny Cash: "The Man Comes Around"

Marceline grimaced in disgust as she flung another ladle full of rancid, congealing fat into the rusted sink. The first few inches of the stuff had been solid; she'd practically had to pry it out of the old deep fryer. It had ended up coming out in one horrible, pus-yellow layer, but beneath that was darker, semi-liquid grease mixed with ancient crumbs of batter that was harder to scoop out and smelled ten times worse.

Standing at a distance with her shirt pulled up over her nose, Bubblegum made a nauseated sound as another scoop of yellow-brown fat landed in the sink with a wet slap. Half of her face was concealed, but the look in her eyes was enough to convey her utter repulsion.

"And you're seriously telling me that not only are you are going to make food in that thing, but you're also going to eat it?" The pink girl sounded as sickened as she looked. "Just because you remembered the food in that stupid Grease movie? Is that why it was called Grease? Ugh, I wouldn't even use that junk for oiling hinges..."

"That's why I'm getting rid of it," Marceline said, her voice sounding strange as she tried her hardest to breathe through her mouth rather than her nose. The worst part about the smell was that it did remind her of the food she was thinking of, crispy golden batons of fried potato that she remembered eating with her mother. It had been in a place similar to the derelict restaurant they were currently standing in, but like most of Marceline's memories that involved her mother everything was brighter and warmer and much more colourful.

When she and Bonnie had watched the movie with the weird teenagers who wore the same jackets, Marceline had immediately recognised the food they were eating in the diner. That had interested her far more than the actual plot which seemed to be about singing and driving cars and not much about the school they were supposed to be attending. Bonnie had spent the start of the movie explaining schools to her with quite a lot of enthusiasm, only to be extremely disappointed by what she'd called 'the worst curriculum and discipline I've ever seen why are they fixing a car when they should be in class'. Marceline didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but it had seriously annoyed the pink girl in any case.

Marceline had found the restaurant on one of her regular scavenging trips, which were much more fun now that her next meal wasn't depending on them. Now she had the opportunity to collect things that she'd have previously seen as nonessential, like trinkets and extra sets of clothes and random electrical items like lamps. The latter would once have been completely useless to her, but she now had a portable generator she'd taken from the vault.

One thing the vault didn't have however was a deep fryer. Marceline had scoured the books in the vault after seeing the movie because although she remembered fries, she had no idea how they were made. Eventually she'd found a reference to them in a cookbook that Bonnie had found and discovered that she needed a deep fryer to make them properly. Apparently the oil needed for a fryer couldn't be stored for more than a couple of years unlike most of the vault's food supplies, so the people who'd constructed it hadn't bothered to install one.

After quite a lot of cursing, Marceline had accepted that she had no way of making the fries she remembered. But then she had found the restaurant, which looked like a broken, faded version of the one from her memories, and had immediately gone inside to investigate. She had no idea if the deep fryer would still work if she cleaned it up, but that was why she'd asked Bonnie to come; she was good at fixing electrical things. However, the pink girl had point-blank refused to even touch the thing until it was clean, and was currently sitting on the grimy counter with her arms folded, looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else.

Really, Bubblegum would have preferred to be back at the vault, working on another de-crystallization formula for her candy people. The first one she'd tried had dissolved the crystals well enough, but had also dissolved the poor candy person she'd used as a guinea pig. She still felt terrible about that, but had told herself that she didn't have a choice. Her own biology was too different to let her experiment on herself, and her only other option was to sit there and watch the little creatures crystallize and fall apart like their miniature versions had. At least it had been quick; she'd barely had time to note that the crystals had gone from the candy person's limbs before it had liquefied into a pool of red goo.

The pink girl was relatively sure that she'd known what had gone wrong, but it required further research and study. Instead here she was watching Marceline digging what was essentially filth out of an old cooking device that she didn't even need but apparently cooking things in boiling oil was a big deal now. Bubblegum didn't get it at all, but then again she accepted that might be because she had no memory of the world before the bombs. It certainly seemed to be important to Marceline at any rate, which was why she hadn't left already. Though she was beginning to wonder what the other girl would do when she realised she didn't have any cooking oil.

Marceline had finally managed to pull the fryer basket free of the congealed fat, and set it to one side as she scraped the last of the ancient oil out of the appliance. At the bottom of the fryer was greasy brown sludge, a revolting slurry of semisolid fat and undefinable chunks of some burnt substance. Scraping as much of it out as she could, Marceline headed over to the camp stove she'd set up in the corner, which had a pot full of soapy water boiling away atop it. Grabbing hold of the handles, careful not to slop it on her legs, Marceline hauled it back over to the fryer and poured it into the oil reservoir, filling it to the brim and then setting the wire basket back into it to soak.

"I hope I can get all the soap out…" Marceline muttered to herself. "It's gonna be a pain to keep bailing that thing out until it's clean."

"Just use the drain," Bubblegum called to her. "Water should go through that no problem."

"What drain?" The grey girl sounded bemused. "There's a drain?"

Sighing, Bubblegum jumped down from the counter and headed over to the fryer, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the thought of having to touch it. She gingerly reached out to take hold of the side, her fingers finding a seam in the metal panel which she then pulled open, revealing a space below the fryer that held a greasy metal bucket and a valve attached to the bottom of the oil reservoir. Marceline had thought it was one solid piece.

"You couldn't have told me it had a drain before I had to scoop all that gross oil out of there?" Marceline snapped, her voice sparking with irritation.

"I thought you knew!" Bubblegum replied defensively. "You're the one who wanted to make fries so I kinda assumed that you knew how these things work!"

"Well I don't!" Marceline growled, glaring at the other girl. Bonnie's only response was a look that was thoroughly unimpressed.

"So exactly how were you planning to work it?" she asked acidly. "Were you just going to hope that you could throw in a potato and fries would come out?"

"Maybe, yeah!" Marceline retorted, and the two girls glowered at each other for a few moments before Bubblegum's expression cracked into a smile, and Marceline began to giggle. "Okay, yeah, so maybe that's not how it works," she admitted. "I was kinda hoping you'd know what with all that reading you do and everything."

"Why didn't you ask then?" Shaking her head with a chuckle, Bubblegum turned the valve handle below the reservoir, and a mixture of hot water, grease and debris flooded into the bucket. Both girls looked into the fryer, and then made identical faces of repulsion. "Okay, we are gonna need WAY more soapy water. And a scrubbing brush."

Several hours later, the two girls had managed to get the fryer into a state that roughly resembled cleanliness, though it still felt uncomfortably sticky in places. Once Marceline had filled it with clean water for the fifth time, Bonnie plugged it into the generator they'd brought from the vault, and they both leaned over it curiously, waiting to see if it still worked.

For several moments nothing seemed to happen, and Marceline sighed. "Figures that after all that it would be broken anyway," she muttered darkly, looking down at her grease and dirt-covered clothes with a grimace. She was glad that she'd picked old, plain ones that morning for scavenging, and that her hair was safely tied back out of the way.

"No, wait, it is working!" Bonnie was still hanging over the appliance, her former disgust forgotten. "Look, you can see the heat currents in the water around the element."

"Around the what now?" Following the pink girl's gaze, Marceline saw that around the curved metal pipe at the bottom of the reservoir, the water seemed to be rippling slightly. As they watched, the ripples slowly became more distinct, then the water surface began to shimmer as faint slicks of prismatic colours undulated across it. A few minutes more and it started to boil in earnest.

"YES!" Punching grease-stained hands into the air in victory, Marceline's smile lasted for as long as it took her to realise exactly what Bonnie had known from the beginning. "Ah breadballs, we still don't have any oil!"

o.o.o.o.o

The old glasshouses in the park were partly ruined, many of the glass panes had been cracked or shattered by the shockwave of the bombs and the resulting cold had killed most of the tropical plants. But they still provided shelter, and the soil was fertile, so hardier plants and trees grew there in wild abundance. The irrigation system still worked as well, faithfully watering the soil at regular intervals even though the human custodians were long dead. Like the fountain in the park, power was supplied from the vault's main reactor though many of the lights had broken in the years since the Mushroom War.

Hiking another basket of sunflower seeds onto her shoulders, Marceline set off along the overgrown path towards the exit. The paving stones in the glasshouses were in even worse condition than the ones outside, inside the rioting plant life had shifted or cracked many of them with roots and creepers so she had to be careful where she stepped. The small candy people frolicking around her feet had even more difficulty, often having to clamber over crazily canted stones and jutting roots, but did their best to keep up.

Marceline had thought Bonnie was being sarcastic when she'd said they'd be helpful, but as soon as she'd shown them the seeds she was looking for they had scattered, returning with armfuls of them to throw in the basket. A couple of the less-crystallized ones had even climbed the overgrown sunflowers to shake more seeds free. This would hopefully be the last trip she'd need to make to harvest them, and it had taken half the time thanks to Bonnie's creations.

Watching them make their way alongside her, Marceline hoped that Bonnie would find a way to fix them soon. The candy folk still didn't seem to be in any pain from the crystals slowly creeping along their limbs but Marceline could see that it made it more difficult for them to walk. The worst afflicted moved with an awkward stiffness that reminded her of Simon on cold mornings, when he'd stumble around for the first few minutes of the day with his back and shoulders hunched, muttering about how much getting old really sucked. Maybe the candy people were just getting old. Simon had once told her there was no cure for age when she'd asked him when his back would get better.

Making a mental note to tell that to Bonnie later in the hope that it might make her feel better about not being able to cure them, Marceline walked out into the park and headed for the vault. "Thanks little guys," she called back to the candy people, who waved to her in response then wandered off towards the fountain.

Getting the full baskets back to the vault was the worst part, Marceline had to try to keep it level on her shoulders as the seeds would shift about within and throw her off-balance. She'd made the mistake of trying to jog back with the first one, which had ended with the off-centre weight of the basket pulling her off her feet as she rounded a corner, then she'd spent about half an hour having to gather the spilled seeds up again.

Thankfully this time she reached the vault without incident and went inside. Punching the entry code into the computer with practiced ease, Marceline picked up the rope that was lying by the hatch and attached it firmly to the straps of the basket. The first time she'd done this; she'd carried the basket down on her shoulders and nearly gotten jammed in the ladder shaft, then nearly dropped it. Bonnie had suggested using a rope to lower it first instead, proving once again that the pink girl was too smart for her own good, and that was what Marceline did now. Carefully unspooling the rope hand over hand until she felt the basket hit the bottom of the shaft, Marceline then climbed down after it.

Of course, she still had to drag the blasted thing to the cafeteria which Marceline did with extreme bad grace, muttering curses under her breath which were mostly aimed at her stupid obsession with making fries. Maybe it was because it was something to do now that she didn't spend every day struggling to survive, maybe it was because of the association with her mother, but Marceline still hadn't given up, even if she had to drag another three baskets of seeds back from the glasshouses. She hoped not, because she didn't think there were very many left now even though ten years of wild growth had spawned dozens upon dozens of the flowers.

To Marceline's surprise, when she hauled the basket into the cafeteria's kitchen, Bonnie was there. The pink girl was working her way through the huge pile of seeds Marceline had already collected, rinsing them in the sink then spreading them out to dry on a counter. She looked around as she heard Marceline enter, giving her a brief, half-hearted smile.

"Hey. I thought you might need some help with these," Bonnie said, her voice strangely dull and flat though Marceline could tell she was trying to hide that.

"I thought you were working on a cure for your little candy guys?" Marceline replied cautiously. She hadn't seen the other girl for a couple of days; Bonnie had shut herself in the lab saying that she needed to focus. And the pink girl was still wearing the same clothes as she had been then, dark circles around her eyes suggesting that she hadn't slept much.

Looking away, Bonnie sighed heavily, the sound almost becoming a yawn. "Yeah, but I'm not getting anywhere right now so I'm taking a break. The more frustrated I get, the less progress I make."

"Maybe you need to sleep? You look… rough." The suggestion was given as delicately as Marceline could put it, but all she got in response was a look of irritation.

"No, I'm fine," the pink girl stated stubbornly. "Besides, I know what I'm doing with this and…"

"You could just explain it to me, and go get some rest, or a bath, or fresh clothes or something," Marceline offered. "No offence Bon, but you look like you need all three."

Bonnie's shoulders slumped slightly in response, but she didn't stop what she was doing, refilling the metal colander she was using to rinse the seeds and placing it in the sink. "Look, just let me do this okay? I just wanna do something that's actually going to work for once so that I know it's not just me, the things I do turn out okay sometimes."

The pink girl actually sounded defeated for once, and Marceline frowned in concern, feeling somewhat useless since she couldn't exactly talk science with the other girl to help her figure out where she was going wrong. "Well, okay. But I'm helping too, since this was my dumb idea to begin with. Now how the heck do we turn all these seeds into oil?"

o.o.o.o.o

The golden oil that Marceline tipped into the fryer was slightly grainy with fragments of seed husk and flesh but Bonnie hadn't thought that would make much of a difference. The pink girl had eventually agreed to get some sleep once the two of them had finished blending, roasting and pressing the seeds to get the oil out of them. Marceline was slightly disappointed since that meant she wouldn't get to try the fries, but Bonnie had been distinctly underwhelmed by the concept of fried potato sticks from the beginning.

Turning the fryer on, Marceline peeled and chopped the potatoes she'd brought with her while she waited for it to boil. The vegetables grew wild all over the wilderness; Simon had taught her what the plant looked like so it hadn't taken her long to find some. Cutting them into the perfect long rectangles she remembered was much harder, hers came out a lot chunkier and mismatched. She was sure they'd taste the same though.

Throwing chopped potato into the wire basket, Marceline dunked them into the oil which immediately began to bubble and crackle. And the moment the smell hit her nose, nostalgia hit her like a boot to the head. The same memories of her and her mother swam back to the front of her mind, even clearer this time. Marceline hadn't been sitting beside her, she'd been… higher up? And there had been a plastic tray in front of her, she'd hit it and it had rebounded, catapulting the fries up into her face while her mother laughed helplessly.

Marceline blinked, and the memory was gone. But the smell remained, and somehow it was comforting, familiar. And she needed salt. She didn't know where that thought had come from, but Marceline did know that she definitely needed it. And ketchup. There was definitely salt in the vault, maybe there was ketchup too.

Taking a couple of steps away from the fryer, Marceline paused. Bonnie had told her that these things could be dangerous if they were left unattended just like a fire. They could catch fire. And if you put water on them to extinguish them, apparently they exploded. With an irritated growl, Marceline decided that she'd just have to take the fries out and turn the appliance off, then head to the vault and come back to finish cooking them. It wouldn't take long, she'd found a shortcut down an old alley.

Flipping the power switch on the generator, Marceline lifted the basket out of the oil and waited for it to stop bubbling. Once it had simmered down to what she hoped was a safe temperature, she hopped over the counter and dashed out of the restaurant.

o.o.o.o.o

As Marceline had thought, it didn't take long to get to the vault, but she had to spend some time rummaging in the vault's pantry until she managed to find a familiar red bottle. It was still sealed, and when she peeled the plastic cap off and gingerly sniffed at the contents nostalgia decided to give her another sucker punch. She knew this smell as well.

She was tempted to wake up Bonnie, but since there was no sound from the room the girl slept in when it wasn't movie night, Marceline guessed she was actually asleep. She couldn't hear the sound of the keyboard in there or anything, and that was definitely unusual.

To her annoyance, when she stepped outside again it had started to rain, heavily, as night began to fall. The streets would be pitch-dark, but that made no difference to Marceline. The rain was a pain in the ass, but she was pretty sure the restaurant roof was watertight; she hadn't seen any sign of flooding inside. She'd just have to sprint.

But as she turned onto the street the building was on, Marceline felt a sudden rush of unease that had nothing to do with the cold rain pelting across her back. Something was different. And despite spending nearly a year in relative safety, Marceline's survival instincts were still as razor sharp as they'd ever been. If something felt wrong, something most likely WAS wrong, so she'd need to be careful.

Moving slowly now, ignoring the rain as she placed one foot carefully and soundlessly in front of the other, Marceline approached the restaurant. Maybe the smell of cooking had attracted wild animals, and she immediately decided that if some wild creature was helping itself to her fries, it would quickly become an entrée. Turnabout was fair play after all. Her indignation at the thought made her unconsciously increase her pace, though it was still silent.

But all thoughts of spit-roast racoon vanished the minute Marceline walked into the building. There was something here that was eating her fries, but it wasn't an animal. It wasn't a human either, or a mutant, or even Bonnie's candy people. It was a man in a neat business suit, with blue-grey skin and big, big eyes that widened in surprise as he saw her. His mouth fell open, revealing sharp teeth. And for the third time that day nostalgia struck, this time with a sledgehammer and a vengeance.

"Daddy…"


	12. A Smart Kid

_Stranded here on planet earth_  
 _It's not much but it could be worse_  
 _Everything's free here, there's no crowds  
_ \- Porcupine Tree: "A Smart Kid"

"Why?"

The word was simple, but weighted with meaning and unspoken questions. On an immediate level, it was 'why are you eating my fries', but really that was trivial compared to the other things Marceline wanted to know. 'Why didn't you come before?', that was a big one. 'Why did you leave me and Mom', that was another. 'Why didn't you take us with you', 'why did you let Mom die', 'why didn't you help us', 'why do you look like you just stepped out of a business meeting', 'why did you show up now', "why did it have to be you and not Simon'. So many whys that had no answer.

If he'd been Simon, Marceline would have ran to him without hesitation. It was Simon who'd found her crying in the rubble of the ruined city where she'd once lived. It was Simon who'd cared for her, loved her and taught her how to survive in the postapocalyptic world she'd grown up in. And Simon had abandoned her, true, but that was because of the crown. Her father had deliberately chosen to walk out of her life, and Marceline wasn't about to let him waltz back in.

"Marceline!" From the tone of his voice, it sounded as if her father hadn't even realised it had been at least twelve years since he'd last seen her; he sounded as cheerful as if this was a regular meeting, or she was still a toddler. He got to his feet and stepped around the table towards her, arms outstretched as if he was going to hug her, but she immediately hissed at him and backed away. Her father blinked in surprise, as if she'd slapped him. She was sorely tempted. "Well, I guess it's been a while, hasn't it?" he remarked, as casually as if she had responded to him with a smile instead of bared fangs. "You're certainly a lot bigger, and you learned to walk! Why you couldn't even take three steps without falling on your bottom last time I saw you..."

The girl continued to back away, slowly circling around the table her father had been sitting at, keeping it between them. "Yeah, it's been a long time," she replied coldly, her eyes flickering across his face, noting the similarities between it and her own. She did look more like her father, and that just made her angrier. "What do you want?"

Her father halted, looking genuinely surprised. "Do I need a reason to speak to my own daughter?" he asked, and Marceline could have sworn she could hear actual hurt in his voice. "It's taken me a while to track you down. You've certainly moved around a lot..."

He sounded so casual about that - as if Marceline had been trekking across the wasteland for her own amusement instead of survival - and the hot fury simmering in her stomach exploded into her throat. When she next spoke, her voice was an angry shout.

"Maybe that's because you just left me here!" she yelled, fangs flashing. "Do you even know that Mom died when the bombs fell? Did you care? She died and I was alone and you never came back!" She swallowed, hard, feeling a lump in her throat as her eyes start to burn.

_...the sky was burning, a lurid, toxic green illuminating the thick clouds of smoke and dust that blocked out the sun. It looked like the entire world was shrouded in emerald fire, and Marceline sobbed in confusion and terror as she pushed herself up from the withered grass where she'd landed after her mother had thrown her from the window. She could see figures moving in the streets, black stick figures that moved jerkily and screamed, but her baby mind couldn't comprehend why and her memory clouded as she subconsciously blocked it out._

_Marceline turned back to the apartment block where she lived, looking up to the stairwell window she'd been thrown from. And for a moment she saw her mother's pale face looking down at her, her skin a stark white against the darkness of her hair. Then she heard another loud crack, like a gunshot but ten times louder, and her mother disappeared behind a curtain of crushed brick and plaster._

_"Mommy!" Wailing in fear, Marceline took one wobbly step towards the building, arms outstretched. Then the ground shook beneath her feet and she was thrown backwards by a shockwave as the apartment building collapsed in on itself and crumpled to the ground as if it had been made of paper. Fragments of broken glass and stone showered down across the small girl, grazing her face and hands as she was enveloped in a thick dust cloud that smelled of home._

_When she managed to climb back to her feet, shaking like a leaf and so frightened that she could barely breathe - let alone cry – the building was gone. All that was left was another pile of rubble, as if the apartment building had never existed. She never saw her mother again._

Hating herself for the tears that gouged trails of fire down her cheeks, Marceline snarled at her father as he took a step closer to her, his lambent eyes wide with sympathy she didn't want or need. "You keep away from me," she warned, wishing she had her hatchet. "I hate you! You could have saved us! You could have saved Mom!"

"It wasn't that simple, sweetheart," her father said soothingly, as if that made a difference to her. "Things were... complicated back then. The chaos kept me really busy, your mother knew that. When the bombs fell, I was elsewhere. There was nothing I could do." His voice was sorrowful, but that made no difference to Marceline. He hadn't been there.

"Don't call me sweetheart," she hissed through gritted fangs. "You could have taken us with you. You didn't even try to find me," and her own voice cracked with pain and betrayal as she went on. "I was there for two days, and you never came!"

_Marceline stumbled unsteadily through the empty, ruined streets, looking for someone, anyone. Her fingernails were broken and scabbed from where the little girl had scrabbled uselessly at the rubble that had once been her home, trying to find her mother. But she was far too small to move the blocks of masonry that had buried her, and once the fires in the sky had faded she had left to find help. She was too young to realise that her mother was most likely dead, or beyond any help that the shattered world could offer._

_Her throat was still raw from screaming for her mother and dry now from thirst too. Marceline hadn't slept since the bombs, too scared to stop; all she knew was that the sky had turned dark twice now, and she still hadn't found anyone to help her mother. She was hungry as well, but wouldn't have been able to eat even if she had found food, her terror filling her with a constant nausea even as her steps grew weaker and more hesitant._

_Stumbling to a halt, Marceline looked around herself through tearful eyes but saw no-one. Taking a deep, painful breath, she screamed for her father as she had done every time she'd stopped so far. He had gone away before the bombs, he hadn't been in her home when it had collapsed, but he hadn't returned. He had disappeared before - sometimes for a long time- but he had always come back in the end and then her mother had smiled and he had lifted her into the air while she giggled helplessly._

_Marceline's legs trembled beneath her as she wailed her father's name; it wouldn't be long until she simply collapsed from exhaustion and hunger. Later, when she was older, she would realise that if she'd walked in the opposite direction to the one she'd taken then she would most likely have died in the ruins when she couldn't walk any further. And if she hadn't been half demon, she'd have died within a few hours of the bombs falling. Instead, she heard footsteps, and her head jerked up to see a figure running towards her, their shape made huge and monstrous by the pack on their back._

_It wasn't her father. As the man knelt in front of her, staring at her as if he couldn't quite believe she was real, Marceline saw that he had pale blue skin and a thick mane and beard of white hair. He slowly reached out to put his hands on her shoulders, like he was trying to prove to himself that she really was there, but the little girl didn't need convincing. She threw herself forwards into him and buried her face in his beard, sobbing pitifully. He started in surprise at her reaction, then wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly as she wept._

Marceline's breath shuddered out through her teeth in frustration as her tears continued to fall, refusing to stop. Her father was no longer making any attempt to approach her; he looked awkward and almost embarrassed by seeing her cry. Almost as if she was a tiny baby again, and he had no idea how to placate her.

"Well, you were with that other guy," he said eventually as her sobs slowly died, eyeing her cautiously as if he was afraid she'd start crying again. "You know, the one with the big nose and the beard."

"Simon," Marceline said flatly. For some unknown reason she was deeply discomfited by hearing her father talking about Simon. Maybe because Simon had been a much better parent to her than he had.

"Yeah, that was his name," her father replied with a snap of his fingers. "I saw you with him, and you seemed fine, and I still had a lot of work to do and all he had to worry about was that evil crown of his…"

"You mean you KNEW?!" The girl's voice was choked with rage and disbelief. "You knew that crown was evil, and that it would make him crazy, and you never warned him? You knew where I was, and you just left me there?" Her fists clenched, and Marceline was desperate to smash one or preferably both right into his smug face as he stood there with the gall to look hurt by her accusations.

"Sweetheart…" he began, but she immediately shouted him down.

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" Marceline's voice came out as an embarrassingly shrill shriek. "I'm not your sweetheart!"

"Fine!" Her father sounded more exasperated than offended. "Marceline. You're still too young to understand this properly, but I have some very important responsibilities that I can't just ignore. It wouldn't have been safe for you if I'd taken you with me, and that Simon guy was taking good care of you so I left you with him." From the tone of his voice, it sounded as if her father really believed that. "And yes, I knew that crown was bad news," he continued." It's been around for a long, long time and he's not the first person to have been owned by it; but he seemed to be doing okay in that he hadn't started a new ice age. So I thought that hey, maybe that meant he was actually able to control it. I was wrong then I'm sorry."

Marceline didn't even want to know how her father had known about the crown. "Well he couldn't," she began shakily, her voice trembling from a combination of anguish and fury. "And it wasn't his fault," she added defensively, before her father could make any derogatory comment. "He needed the crown to keep us safe, but it changed him. He went completely crazy and left when I was eleven. It wasn't his fault," she repeated. "And you still never came back."

Her father looked increasingly awkward at that, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Well, uhh… maybe I kind of lost track of you for a while," he admitted ruefully. "That was totally my fault. But hey, you made it just fine by yourself. You've got to be what, about fifteen now? My little girl's one tough cookie." He actually sounded proud of her. Marceline could scarcely believe it. Here he was over a decade since she'd last seen him, acting like his absence had been necessary and that she was supposed to just forgive him.

"So why did you come back now?" she asked belligerently, slamming her palms down on the table and leaning across it to glare at him. "I needed you when I was little and you never came. Now I don't."

"And that's how I know you're tough enough now to learn about what you really are," her father replied, seemingly happy that she'd asked. "You're half demon after all, and you're big enough to be able to handle yourself in the Nightosphere since you survived here…" He paused, looking around the derelict diner and out to the ruined street. "Hell on earth, and it wasn't even my fault. Humans…" he muttered to himself, then returned his attention to his daughter. "Anyway, it's time for you to come back there with me and start learning how to rule. That'll be fun, right? Like being a… what's the word…" Her father looked away as his brow furrowed, snapping his fingers as if waiting for a cue, then his expression cleared. "Like being a princess! Girls like being princesses, right?"

Immediately thinking of Bonnie - though there was no way she was even going to mention the pink girl to her father - Marceline's eyes narrowed. "I'm not a princess," she said coldly. "And I'm not going anywhere with you." The word 'Nightosphere' had stirred something in the back of her mind, a half-formed memory of hearing her mother speak it, but she didn't care what it meant. Not if it meant asking her father to explain it. Besides, Bonnie would probably know.

Her father blinked, taken aback by the outright refusal. "But I'm your father," he stated, as if that made up for everything she'd been through. "You belong with me," he added, with a dismissive wave at their surroundings. "Not in this dump."

If looks could kill, and her father could actually die, then he would have dropped dead there and then. "Oh, so now I belong with you?" Marceline growled, her voice low and dangerous. "Not when I was little? When I actually needed you?"

"Oh come on, now you're just being unreasonable," her father sighed. "You wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the Nightosphere when you were little; I had to leave you here with Crown Guy."

"You mean you couldn't have stayed here with me instead?" The words came out as an angry hiss. "This Nightosphere place was more important?"

"Well, it's my job," he explained, as if he was talking to a five year-old. "Someone has to rule that place, and right now that someone is me. But one day swee- Marceline, it'll be you. So you need to…" He was interrupted by his daughter's furious voice.

"Never!" Marceline almost screamed her denial into his face. "That's why you're here? Because you want me to take your place? That's all you care about?!"

"Uhm…" Her father paused, as if momentarily wrong-footed. "That is why I'm here, yes, but…" Again, he never got a chance to finish, something that would rankle and fester for both of them in the years to come. Instead, Marceline strode around the table, shoving him to one side as he tried to stop her, and made for the door.

"Forget it!" she snarled back at him. "I don't want to take your place, I don't want to go to the Nightosphere, and I don't ever want to see you again! Just go away!"

"Well now you're just acting like a child," he replied, actually sounding irritated now. But Marceline didn't reply, her eyes widening momentarily as his words sparked another memory.

 _"_ _Fine then. I'm out of here." The man who had once been Simon spat the words with nothing but utter contempt in his voice. "Come find me when you're not a whiny little baby any more."And with that he was gone, vanishing from her life like her father before him._

Flinching as the memory faded, Marceline glared at her father until she felt fresh tears welling in her eyes, then sharply turned her back on him and sprinted off into the dark, rainswept streets without another word.

Hunson Abadeer looked after her for a few moments, then sighed heavily. "Teenagers…"

o.o.o.o.o

Somehow, Marceline found herself back in the park, maybe because it was the only place in the entire city that still had working streetlights. She could see perfectly well without them of course, but the light still seemed to draw her like a moth. She wasn't sure how long she'd spent running through the streets, she'd just wanted to get as far away from her father as possible. And if he'd tried to stop her then, well, she really would have punched him.

The rain was still beating down on her with steady, relentless percussion. Her clothes were soaked through, sticking to her uncomfortably now, but she was past caring. The sodden grass squished beneath her feet, the mud sucking at her shoes, so she moved onto the path instead and followed it unthinkingly. All she wanted at that moment was just to keep moving until the hurt went away, until she'd left her father far, far behind.

Marceline had always told herself that if her father was alive then maybe he was unable to come and find her. Maybe he didn't know where she was. Maybe he was stuck in that strange place he went to when he stepped through the wall. Sometimes she had angrily assumed that he just didn't care, and she'd hated him for it. But now that she'd seen him again, now that she knew that he'd chosen to leave her where she was and had been indifferent to her suffering, that hurt far worse than anything she could have imagined. If he'd chosen to leave her here, had he also chosen to let her mother die?

Ahead of her, the fountain loomed into view, water droplets glittering in the lamplight as they rose and fell in a serene, endless patter. The sound was soothing, and Marceline headed towards the structure. To her surprise, she saw the small, multi-coloured shapes of Bonnie's candy people poking their heads out from their shelters at her approach; normally they'd have been asleep after nightfall. She went over to kneel by their tents, wondering if the rain had gotten into them, but inside the little creatures seemed perfectly dry though they all looked up at her with worried eyes.

"What?" she asked, wondering if it was obvious that she'd been crying. Then it hit her, if Bonnie was still asleep in the vault, maybe she hadn't been up to check on them. The pink girl always checked on her candy people at dusk - like a mother hen fussing over her chicks - and if she hadn't come they would have wondered why. Marceline's mouth twisted bitterly. If the little creatures felt abandoned after just one night they had no idea what that was actually like.

"Your mom's sleeping," she said shortly. "That's why she hasn't come. Is that why you're all still awake?" She got several nods in response, and sighed irritably. "Well you'll just have to live with that. She's tired. You'll see her tomorrow. It's not like you'll never… never…" And before she knew it, Marceline was sobbing again, just as she'd sobbed as a small child alone in the ruins. All of the half-remembered anguish and loss came surging back to her, ghosts of old memories that her father had called up that weren't about to be laid to rest so easily.

Marceline's shoulders shook as she wept, the rain still hammering down on her. Her mother was gone, so was Simon and now her father… her father only wanted her to take his place. If he'd ever loved her, surely he wouldn't have left her here, or would at least have checked up on her once in a while. She briefly wondered what he'd have done if she'd died, then reflected that he probably wouldn't have cared since in that case she obviously wouldn't have been tough enough for his precious Nightosphere.

Feeling something move against her knees, Marceline blinked her tears away and looked down to see several of the little candy people clustered around her, looking up at her with concern. Jib was clambering awkwardly up onto her lap, his movements stiff because of the sugar crystals that had formed in his limbs. The others followed, some with more difficulty than others, and they pressed against her midriff as if they were trying to hug her. It was an impossible task for creatures so small, but Marceline found that she appreciated the effort and smiled through her tears.

"I'm okay," she said hoarsely, gathering them up in her arms and hugging them gently against her chest. "But thanks." The little creatures chattered back at her, and though she couldn't decipher what they were saying through the heavy rain, the words were unmistakeably comforting.

"Oh glob, I'm so sorry, I over- Marceline?" The girl looked up with a start to see Bonnie hurrying towards her carrying an umbrella to keep the rain off. The pink girl looked anxious, but her expression cleared as she saw the candy people in Marceline's arms. "Oh thank goodness, I was afraid they might wander off to look for me." She knelt beside the other girl, putting the umbrella between them to shelter them both. Then she carefully lifted the little creatures off Marceline one by one, setting them down in their shelters. "You should all be asleep," she chided gently, but smiled as they chirped back at her in protest. "Yes, I know I never came to check on you, but that doesn't mean you've not to go to sleep, okay?"

Marceline watched as Bonnie made sure each and every last one of the candy people were settled in their respective beds, feeling another sharp twist of pain. Her mother had done the same with her once, she was sure of it; she remembered a soft voice and a blanket being tucked in around her. It didn't take long for the little creatures to fall asleep, apparently reassured just by Bonnie's presence, and once the last one had dropped off the pink girl closed the tent flaps on their shelters to keep the rain out and turned back to Marceline.

"Thank goodness you were here," she said with a short sigh of relief. "They weren't panicking or anything, were they? I should have set an alarm before I went to sleep…" Before Marceline could reply, Bonnie frowned as she took a closer look at her, reaching out to gently touch her tearstained face. "Are you okay?"

Not trusting herself to speak, Marceline nodded instead. Then, to her everlasting shame, burst into tears again. "…'m sorry," she mumbled, grinding the heels of her palms into her eyes. "It's just… back at the diner…" Her words tailed off as another sob shook her body. "My dad was there."

Bonnie looked at her in wordless surprise, not quite sure how to respond. She'd listened to Marceline talk about her father before, with far, far less warmth than she spoke about Simon, but it had always sounded as if the other girl never expected to see him again. "Has he been trying to find you?" she asked hesitantly.

Marceline tried to laugh at that, but the sound became a fresh sob. "No, he knew where I was the whole time," she choked out with a forced smile. "I just wasn't good enough for him then, but now it's different." The words were pouring out of her now in a flood of bitter resentment. "Apparently now I'm tough enough to go be his replacement in this stupid Nightosphere place. That's all he cares about. The Nightosphere. Not me, not my mom…" Her lip quivered and her voice was silenced by fresh sobs at the thought of her mother.

In front of her, Bonnie shifted position to move closer to the other girl, wrapping both arms around her tightly and holding her close. The umbrella had tipped over and was starting to skip away across the plaza as the wind caught it, but the pink girl had already forgotten it. She gently rocked the taller girl back and forth, feeling Marceline bury her face into the crook of her neck, warm tears starting to drip down onto her collarbone in stark contrast to the cold raindrops. "Shhhhhh, it's okay," she whispered gently into a pointed ear, raising one hand to stroke through Marceline's drenched hair.

"It's not okay," the other girl moaned into her neck, though her arms curled around Bonnie's waist. "My mom's dead, Simon's gone, my dad only cares about the Nightosphere. If I'd died in the bombs, nobody would have cared."

"Marceline!" Bonnie's voice was horrified. "That's a terrible thing to say…" She wanted to go on and tell her that was silly, that her father must love her, but on reflection the pink girl realised that was probably a bad idea. She hadn't met him after all, and as awful as the prospect was, maybe he really didn't care about his daughter. "I'd have cared," she said instead. "Well, I wouldn't have known you then, we'd never have met… but I'm glad you're here with me. I care about you."

Raising her head slowly, Marceline looked at the other girl doubtfully, but there was only sincerity in her magenta eyes. She felt Bonnie's hands cup her chin, pink fingertips gently brushing her tears away then pushing her tangled hair back behind her ears. That same strange emotion that the pink girl's presence made her feel seemed to well up inside her chest, numbing the anguish her father had left her with, and as she leaned forwards their noses touched. Bonnie looked at her questioningly, then her eyes went wide as Marceline quickly and impulsively pressed her lips against the other girl's in a short but heartfelt kiss.

Feeling Bonnie tense, Marceline drew back sharply, afraid that she'd crossed some kind of invisible boundary. The pink girl was staring at her, as if in disbelief, her mouth open slightly in surprise. She didn't say anything, and Marceline had a horrible feeling that she'd just made a terrible mistake. With a muttered apology, she pushed the other girl away and sprang to her feet, then fled into the night.


	13. A Kiss To Build A Dream On

_Give me a kiss to build a dream on,_  
 _And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss._  
 _Sweetheart, I ask no more than this:_  
 _A kiss to build a dream on.  
_ \- Louis Armstrong: "A Kiss To Build A Dream On"

"Stupid," Marceline whispered to herself, trying to sniffle back the stubborn tears that wouldn't stop falling. Trying and failing. "Stupid, stupid, stupid…"

The girl was huddled in her blankets back in the tree, her sodden clothes in a heap to one side. Outside the storm was still raging, the occasional flash of lightning throwing everything into stark, sharp-edged silhouette. Marceline hadn't stoked the fire or lit a lantern or anything when she'd finally gotten back. Instead she'd simply clambered up the rope to the upper chamber, peeled off her wet clothes and pulled on a dry shirt from the pile, then clambered into the pile of blankets and crushed Hambo to her chest. There was already a large damp patch on the back of her shirt and the blankets from her wet hair, but she didn't care.

"Now she'll think I'm really weird or something," she muttered to the ragged stuffed toy. "I should never have kissed her. I just… I don't know!" Marceline looked down at Hambo, who gazed back at her with non-judgmental button eyes and a serene stitched smile. "When she said she cared about me I… I just wanted to, okay?" The toy said nothing, but Marceline hugged him anyway, tears soaking into threadbare plush. "Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe I should have asked first. They don't ask in the stupid movies! I… I wish Simon was here," she murmured forlornly, her shoulders jerking with another sob. "He'd know what I should do. And what you do when you like someone. I mean, I liked her already but this is different. And my dad…"

With a furious yell, Marceline hurled Hambo across the small chamber with all her strength. He hit the wooden wall with a dull, muffled thud and rolled down it to land sideways on her wet clothes. The toy was still facing her, and his lopsided smile hadn't changed. Hambo never changed. Not like Simon had. Not like her feelings did. With a regretful twist of her mouth, Marceline wriggled out of the blankets and retrieved him, stroking his worn fur gently.

"I'm sorry Hambo, I didn't mean that. It's my dad I want to hurt. Not you." The night wind whistling through the gap in the tree trunk was cold against Marceline's bare legs and she shivered, returning to the blankets and burrowing into them once more. "It's his fault," she continued, choking back a sob that hiccupped painfully in her throat instead. "If he hadn't been there then I wouldn't have thought about Mom, and if I hadn't thought about Mom…"

_...the second crack was like a gunshot but louder, the sound of stone perishing, and her mother's face disappeared behind a curtain of falling brick and plaster but for just a second Marceline saw bright scarlet explode across her mother's pale skin before she vanished completely…_

Marceline recoiled violently from the memory as if from a physical blow. They were coming back now - clearer than they'd ever been before - showing her things she thought she'd forgotten. Things she wanted to forget. That was her father's fault as well, she had decided. But worse still was the tiny voice she couldn't quite block out, the one that said maybe she should have gone with him to this Nightosphere place. Maybe she should have given him a chance.

"I hate him," she growled between her sharp teeth at the traitorous thoughts. "If that place was so great, why couldn't he have taken Mom and me there? Mom loved him," and Marceline wasn't sure how she knew that - _it had something to do with moonlight and a picnic blanket_ \- but she did. "And he let her die. He'd have let me die too."

Suddenly, her head jerked up as she heard a movement below, remembering with a silent curse that she hadn't set the tripwire. Holding her breath, Marceline listened carefully; maybe it was just a wild animal. She'd pulled the rope up behind her so unless it was a squirrel it wasn't getting up to where she was. And if it was a squirrel, well, Marceline had eaten squirrels before. It would certainly make a change from the rehydrated meals.

But the sounds were definitely footsteps. Marceline's sharp hearing could pick up the difference between a person's – one wearing shoes no less – steps and an animal's soft tread. Maybe her father had followed her, and that thought filled her with rage. Carefully setting Hambo to one side, she groped for the handle of the hatchet that she still kept by her bed, only to freeze as she heard a voice.

"Marceline?" The sound of her name tied the grey girl's insides into complicated knots like the ones Simon used to show her. It wasn't her father at all. It was Bonnie.

o.o.o.o.o

It had taken Princess Bubblegum nearly twice as long as usual to reach the tree. The heavy rain and thick mud made it slow, uncomfortable going. She'd managed to retrieve her umbrella before it skittered off into the dark and she'd had the sense to change her shoes for wellington boots. Bubblegum knew the way to the tree well by now so she hadn't needed a compass, but she had taken a battery-powered lantern. Unfortunately the item wasn't as waterproof as its warranty claimed, and the heavy rain had gotten into its inner workings and shorted it out not even halfway to her destination.

Luckily Bubblegum had complete confidence in her direction sense, so she hadn't turned back. Instead she had stubbornly marched onwards in the pitch darkness, waiting for a lightning flash to illuminate the tree that would appear ahead of her if she just continued in the same direction. The darkness didn't bother her in the slightest; it had been just as dark down in the vault before she'd figured out how to switch on the lights. Sure, she couldn't see in darkness like Marceline could, but magnetic poles were magnetic poles - north didn't stop being north just because it was night.

So Bubblegum felt no surprise or relief when a large electrostatic discharge momentarily lit the darkened landscape with harsh white light and revealed the shape of the giant tree ahead of her, only vindication. Hurrying towards it, hunched beneath the umbrella that she was struggling to hold onto in the driving rain, the girl wondered why there wasn't any light coming from it. Maybe Marceline hadn't come back here after all; Bubblegum knew that she didn't need light to see, but the grey girl usually had a fire burning to keep warm.

Or maybe… maybe she'd found her father again. Or he'd found her. And she'd decided to go with him after all. Without telling her. Bubblegum felt something twist sharply in her gut at the thought – certainly not an organ so it must be emotional – and for once she hoped she was wrong. After all, why would Marceline kiss her, and then run off to be with her father? Did kissing mean goodbye as well? Bubblegum wasn't sure.

As she reached the tree, Bubblegum carefully pushed the blanket covering the entrance to one side, slightly awkwardly due to the weight of the rainwater that had soaked it. She knew that Marceline usually set a tripwire to wake her if anything tried to get in, however there was nothing there. Bubblegum felt another pang of non-biological pain as she realised that was another sign that the other girl wasn't here. She stepped inside anyway, automatically shaking the rain from her umbrella and setting it to one side to dry.

"Marceline?" she called uncertainly. It was almost as dark inside the tree as it had been outside, but there was a dim red glow from the hearth, just enough to allow Bubblegum to see that there was no sign of the grey girl in the main chamber. Taking a hesitant step forwards, she could just make out the gap in the ceiling that led to the upper section which looked like a gaping, dark wound in the faint light from the fire.

There was no answer. Bubblegum's shoulders sagged in both disappointment and a pain she didn't quite understand because there was no scientific reason for it. Then again, there had been no scientific explanation for what she'd felt when Marceline had kissed her either, had there? She hadn't felt anything like that before, in this body or her original one, and while it was strange and unsettling it had somehow felt… good?

Going back to the entrance, Bubblegum pushed the blanket aside and looked out at the rain gloomily. She was already wet despite her umbrella, but when she got back to the vault she could shower and curl back up in bed. She would just have to hope that Marceline would come back for supplies, since finding the other girl would be next to impossible in the ruined city. Especially if she'd gone with her father after all.

Besides, the pink girl thought to herself, she had her candy people and she still needed to find a cure for them. She'd never been lonely before Marceline had shown up. Then again, she considered, maybe that was because she hadn't really known what loneliness was before that. Sighing heavily, Bubblegum decided that Marceline probably wouldn't mind if she waited here for the storm to blow itself out. She didn't feel up to the walk back to the city; the only reason she'd made it to the tree had been the hope that she'd find Marceline here.

Going back to the gap leading to the upper chamber, Bubblegum reached out for the rope so she could climb up to it… but it wasn't there. Her eyes widened in sudden realisation – Marceline pulled the rope up behind her to stop anyone following. So if the rope was gone, then that meant…

"Marceline? Are you there?" Bubblegum called, listening carefully. She could hear rain drumming on the tree's leaves and trunk, the rustle of its branches in the rain, the sullen rumble of thunder. And a stifled, sobbing gasp followed by a faint shift of movement. "I'm not leaving until you let me come up," The pink girl tried to hide the relief in her voice, disguising it as stubbornness instead as she stamped her foot against the packed earth floor. "I know you're there Marceline, I can hear you!"

And Bubblegum could, the sound of the muffled sobs – Marceline most likely had a pillow pressed against her face or something to conceal them – clear now that she was focusing on them rather than the sounds of the storm. They made her feel yet more stabs of that annoyingly unscientific pain that kept plaguing her. "Please let me up?" she asked, her tone softer now. "I need to talk to you... about before."

For a few long moments, all Bubblegum could hear was the rattle of rain and the low moan of the wind. If Marceline was still sobbing, she was muffling it much better now. She was about to say 'please' once more when something dropped from the ceiling. A length of knotted rope which uncoiled like a snake to dangle in front of her, the frayed end hitting the ground with a dull thwap. Bubblegum looked up at the gap in the ceiling; she could only see darkness. She tugged experimentally at the rope, hoping that this wasn't Marceline's idea of a joke and it would just come loose, but it held firm. Kicking off her muddy boots, and shrugging off her almost equally muddy jacket, Bubblegum took hold of the rope and started to climb.

It was certainly much more awkward than the ladders she was used to in the vault. Those had at least been made with some knowledge of ergonomics; this was a slippery mountaineer's rope that she'd barely have been able to climb if not for the knots. Even so, it was slow going. Bubblegum had to brace her feet against one knot, then push herself upwards to grab the rope above another, then haul herself upwards until her feet had found the next knot to brace against. She felt like an overgrown inchworm, and guessed that she looked about as ridiculous.

As soon as the gap in the ceiling was within grabbing distance Bubblegum launched herself at it, her hands snagging the sides. But the impact also drove a long splinter of wood into her left palm like a nail, making her yelp in pain. She automatically snatched her hand back, groping for the rope, then Bubblegum's eyes widened in horror at her mistake. When she'd jumped for the gap she had managed to kick the rope behind herself where it was now swinging gently and uselessly, just out of reach. So she was only clinging to the lip of the gap with one hand as her legs kicked wildly beneath her. One hand that was rapidly losing its grip…

…then a grey hand shot out to grab her wrist in a strong hold, black hair tumbling into Bubblegum's face as Marceline leaned over the edge of the gap. She could just see the gleam of her eyes in the dim light, then the other girl hauled on her arm with surprising strength, pulling her upwards until Bubblegum managed to hook her upper body over the edge of the gap and hang there panting in relief.

"Thanks," the pink girl gasped out, then felt Marceline take hold of her below the arms as she was half-pulled and half-dragged fully onto the wooden floor and rolled into what felt like a pile of blankets. It was almost pitch black here; Bubblegum couldn't make out anything and felt strangely uncomfortable. She'd been inside the tree many, many times now. But she'd never been in the upper chamber; it was like Marceline's bedroom. It was private. However, she was here now, and Marceline… had just dropped wordlessly through the gap in the floor and was rummaging around in the main room below.

Now worried that she'd offended her by following her here, Bubblegum leaned cautiously out over the gap, only to flinch back at a sudden burst of harsh electrical illumination, hearing the low hum of a generator. Moments later, Marceline climbed back up the rope with a smooth one-handed ease that Bubblegum envied, holding a handheld fluorescent tube in the other which she hung on a nail that had been driven into the far wall. Well, as Bubblegum looked around herself in the now brightly lit chamber she saw that 'wall' maybe wasn't entirely accurate. The shape of the space was roughly cylindrical, the ceiling conical, and the floor certainly wasn't entirely flat either. Even more than the space below, it seemed like a natural split in the wood that had just gotten bigger and wider with age. Bubblegum was sitting in a thick pile of blankets and pillows that still felt warm from Marceline's body heat – a fact that now made her tingle in yet another definitely unscientific manner – and she could see a heap of clothes to one side, along with the bag that Marceline usually carried.

Jerking sharply as her curiosity was smothered by the fact that the other girl was right there, Bubblegum shifted uncomfortably amidst the blankets and suddenly took a deep interest in the splinter in her left hand. Turning it palm-up, she flinched slightly at the sight of the dark pink blood seeping from her palm, looking down at where she was sitting to see that she'd already left a bloody handprint on one of the blankets. The splinter itself was nearly three inches long and several millimetres thick; an elongated isosceles triangle of pale wood that had jabbed nearly half its length deep into her skin.

"Here, let me see." Those were the first words Marceline had spoken, her voice hoarse as if she had a bad cold… or had been crying for hours. Taking Bubblegum's hand in both of hers, not meeting the other girl's eyes, Marceline examined it closely. "It should just come right out," she said reassuringly. "I've had a couple like that. I thought I'd gotten rid of them all; I must have missed that one. You want me to get it out for you?"

Well, this was hardly how Bubblegum had imagined their conversation going, but then again the imaginary version hadn't involved her spearing herself on an oversized toothpick either. "Yes," she replied, holding her hand out flat in Marceline's grasp. "Don't worry, I heal quickly. This is nothing."

Moving to one side to get the full benefit of the light, Marceline looked closely at the other girl's hand as she pinched the jutting end of the splinter firmly between her right thumb and forefinger. Feeling her warm breath ghost across her palm, Bubblegum tried not to shiver in response and also tried to ignore the sudden impulse to reach out and touch her face. That was just illogical since she currently had blood all over her hand.

Slowly and deliberately, Marceline drew the splinter out in a single smooth movement. The only sound of pain that the pink girl made was a sharp hiss of breath through her teeth - she didn't cry out or try to pull away. The fact that Bonnie's blood was pink instead of red was odd, but she didn't comment on it. After all, Marceline had grey skin and pointed ears so it wasn't like she wasn't a bit odd herself. Once she had carefully examined Bonnie's palm to make sure there were no fragments of wood left in the wound, Marceline rummaged in her bag for the small first aid kit that Simon had taught her to carry at all times. Taking a sterile antiseptic wipe out of it, she tore the package open and swabbed the wet piece of cotton inside across Bonnie's hand, her nose twitching at the sharp chemical smell.

"Hold that in place," she told the pink girl as she got back to her feet. "I'll get you a hot compress." Bonnie's only response was a nod, which made Marceline wonder if she was glad for the distraction as well. Time spent fussing over her hand was time not spent discussing what had happened back in the park after all.

Dropping down into the main chamber, Marceline grabbed some firewood and moved over to the hearth. The half-light from the fluorescent tube in the chamber above was irritating: not quite bright enough to let her see clearly but not quite dim enough for her darkvision to kick in. She was familiar enough with the tree's interior to locate everything she needed, and within a few minutes the fire had been poked into warm golden life and a saucepan of water was boiling above it with a cloth bobbing on its surface. She set the kettle to boil as well, figuring that then she'd have to come back down to make tea. That would be a convenient excuse if she started crying like a stupid baby again.

Swiping the steaming cloth out of the pot with a spatula, Marceline shook most of the water from it until it was cool enough to touch without scalding herself. Scrambling back up the rope and sitting on the blankets next to Bonnie, she folded the cloth into a long pad and wrapped it around the pink girl's injured hand. "There, keep that on it for now. If there's any bits of wood left in your palm, that should draw them out."

"Thank you," Bubblegum replied, closing her fingers around the folded cloth to keep it in place. The damp heat from the cloth did seem to ease the stinging. "That feels much better."

There was a long, awkward pause which only grew worse as it continued. The two girls were both studiously looking in opposite directions: Marceline fidgeting nervously and Bubblegum completely motionless. Neither of them knew what to say now. Another strobe flash of lightning lit the sky outside followed almost immediately by a rumbling peal of thunder that sounded like an avalanche of boulders.

"It must be right overhead," Bubblegum said, the first to break the silence. "You can tell because…"

"Yeah, by counting how long between the lightning and the thunder," Marceline finished for her. "Simon taught me that."

"Oh. Right." Biting her lip as the uncomfortable silence descended once more, Bubblegum decided that she'd just have to take the initiative. "You kissed me." The statement was abrupt, but perfectly accurate. "Back in the park I mean" She thought about adding 'why?' then decided that sounded too accusatory and waited to hear Marceline's reply instead.

The grey girl twitched nervously in response, wrapping her arms around herself as if she was clutching Hambo to her chest. She would have been doing exactly that if she hadn't been afraid of how Bonnie would react. "I'm sorry," she said eventually, and Bonnie immediately looked away from whatever she was finding so interesting on the far wall and looked towards her. Marceline could see that out of the corner of her eye, but kept her gaze fixed firmly downwards.

"Why are you sorry?" Bonnie sounded more hurt than anything else, which was surprising since Marceline had expected her to just accept the apology. The pink girl twisted her hands together, apparently forgetting about the compress and squeezing a trickle of pink-tinted water into her lap. "Didn't you like it? Is that why you ran away?"

That certainly got Marceline's attention, her head snapping up to look incredulously at the other girl. Bonnie was watching her with wide magenta eyes, looking like she was about to cry. Suddenly Marceline was starting to think that maybe kissing her hadn't been so wrong after all. "Well... I thought you didn't like it!" she said defensively. "You just stared at me and you didn't say anything!"

"I was surprised!" Bonnie's response was almost a wail. "Nobody's ever kissed me, ever, ever! And then you just ran off... was it because I tasted weird?"

"No! You tasted..." _like sugar and strawberry and tears_ "...fine." Truthfully, Marceline had no idea what the other girl was supposed to taste like but she wasn't about to let Bonnie know that. "And didn't your parents ever kiss you?" Even as she asked, Marceline turned bright red at the thought her own parents kissing her like she'd kissed Bonnie.

The pink girl was silent for a few moments then shook her head. "No," she replied quietly. "They never did."

"Oh." Well, that just made things even more awkward. Marceline cursed mentally until she remembered a detail from their very first conversation. "Wait, you said you didn't have parents..."

Bonnie started slightly, as if Marceline had somehow caught her out. "Well, of course I had parents at some point," she said with a nervous giggle. "Everyone does. Mine just... aren't around any more. And they still never kissed me," she added defiantly. "But you totally did. Why?"

"Because I wanted to, okay?" Marceline's sudden outburst took them both by surprise. "I like you and... and it just felt kind of right. Because you said you cared about me," and her tone became victorious as she turned the questioning back on Bonnie. "Why did YOU say THAT?"

"Uhhhhh, maybe because I do care about you, dingdong?" Although Bubblegum had sounded as if she was stating the obvious, her tone shifted into uncertainty as she continued. "Is that weird? Do you care about me?"

Marceline's gaze returned to the blankets beneath them as her face flushed. "Of course I do, you're my friend," she mumbled awkwardly. Shifting in embarrassment, she forced herself to spit the next words out before she could change her mind. "I like you a lot."

The pink girl seemed somewhat reassured by that answer, though when she next spoke there was an odd brittleness to her voice that Marceline didn't quite understand. "So... The kiss was just a friend thing then?" she asked quietly. Pulling her knees up to her chest and propping her chin on them, Bubblegum wrapped her arms around her legs to hold them in place.

Marceline was silent for several moments as she considered a response. It was hard for her to respond to that question since she wasn't sure of the answer herself. Sighing, she decided to just be honest. She owed Bonnie that much at least. "I don't know," she said quietly. "You make me feel weird - not in a bad way!" she added quickly as she saw the look on the other girl's face. "It's just... different I guess. You know like in the movies how girls like guys? I think it's kind of like that but we're both girls so I don't know if it's the same and..." Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Marceline exhaled slowly. "I just wish Simon was here to explain it," she groaned softly. "He'd understand."

There was another long pause, though this time it was much less awkward. Bubblegum glanced towards the other girl then back to the floor as she gathered her resolve. She would have felt far more comfortable talking about this if it had a scientific explanation; instead it was like she was groping in the dark. But so was Marceline, and that convinced her to speak. "I... don't understand it either," she began hesitantly. "You make me feel weird too. In weird places. And I know there's no biological explanation for it which is really annoying because then I could analyse it and understand it. I mean, I think it's at least partly hormonal maybe? But it can't all be hormonal because while that explains the physical manifestations it doesn't explain why I think about you when I'm trying to focus on other things and..." Realising that she was babbling, Bubblegum cleared her throat awkwardly. "Look, I... want you to kiss me again." The pink girl blinked in surprise, she hadn't meant to say that. It was as if her subconscious had seized momentary control of her vocal cords. "You know, for science," she went on in a desperate attempt to cover for herself. "So I can see if my reaction is still the same. Maybe it won't be!"

The other girl didn't reply right away, obviously contemplating Bubblegum's suggestion. Although Marceline tried to tell herself it was a bad idea, that she should just call it quits here before things got any more awkward, she couldn't deny that she still wanted to kiss the other girl. "Okay," she said eventually, turning to look at Bonnie as the pink girl raised her head. Remembering something she'd seen in one of the movies they'd watched, Marceline reached out hesitantly towards Bonnie's face. Her hands froze halfway, quivering awkwardly between them, then she gathered her resolve and placed them on either side of Bonnie's head, cupping her face as she looked into her eyes.

Bubblegum didn't say anything, but she didn't look away either. Instead she held Marceline's gaze as the other girl moved closer, her breathing growing faster as the distance between them grew smaller. Marceline started slightly as she felt Bonnie's hands on her shoulders – a detached part of her mind noting that one of her palms was hot and wet from the compress - expecting the pink girl to push her away, thinking she'd changed her mind. Instead, she was gently pulled forward until once again their noses were touching.

This time there were no tears, or rain, or wind. Just the two of them sitting close together in the decidedly unromantic and unflattering fluorescent light as the storm continued to rage outside. Marceline could feel her own breathing coming more rapidly now as well. Last time she'd barely had time to think about what she was doing; now her stomach was full of butterflies. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and pushed her head forwards to kiss the other girl just as she'd done before.

This time Bonnie didn't tense, or try to pull away. If anything, she seemed to melt forwards into Marceline, her arms sliding around the grey girl's neck as she shifted position until she was kneeling opposite her, their bodies pressed together. That definitely made Marceline feel strange, but not in an unpleasant way. By the time the kiss ended, they were both shaking from nerves and something else, something that made them look at each other once more and exchange shaky smiles.

"I liked that," Bubblegum said softly. "It's still weird… but not bad weird if you get what I mean?"

"I do," Marceline replied, letting her hands fall from Bonnie's face to wrap around her waist. She wasn't sure why there, it just seemed to feel comfortable and natural, and the pink girl didn't object. "Uhm… what do we do now? Are we dating now, like in the movies?"

"I guess so," the other girl shrugged, clearly not sure herself. "If you want to that is. That doesn't mean we stop being friends, does it?"

"Well, what would the point of dating be if you didn't get to stay friends?" That idea just sounded dumb to Marceline. "It just means that we're friends who're dating. And, uh, kissing. That's not weird, is it?"

Bubblegum shook her head in response. "Only if you think it's weird." The two girls smiled at each other again, less nervously now, and settled back down to sit next to each other as another flash of lightning whipcracked overhead. "Do… do you mind if I stay tonight?" she asked tentatively, winding a strand of her pink hair around one finger. "I mean, I really don't wanna walk back until the storm goes away."

"Sure," Marceline agreed readily, getting to her feet and rummaging in a pile of clothes that she thought were reasonably clean. "It'll be like movie night. Just without the movies. You should change into something dry though…" Catching sight of something purple in the pile, Marceline tugged it loose to find that it was a large t-shirt, which was also inside-out. She recognised it as she turned it the right way round as it was black on the outside and had a rather gruesome image of heads on spikes and a snake on the front. Marceline couldn't remember where she'd found it now, but she'd sometimes slept in it. It still seemed clean though. "Here, this should fit."

Catching the shirt as Marceline threw it to her; Bubblegum turned it over and made a face as she saw the picture. However, it was soft and dry, and the latter alone set it several notches above what she was currently wearing. The coat and umbrella had protected her from the worst of the weather, but the shirt and pants she'd been wearing underneath were still damp and starting to chafe at her skin. She automatically began to pull them off, tugging the shirt over her head and putting it to one side, then unfastening her pants and pushing them down over her hips to her knees so she could wriggle out of them. And then she realised that Marceline was still there, though as soon as their eyes met the grey girl blushed and quickly descended the rope to the lower chamber.

"I'll, uh, make some tea while you get changed," Marceline called up to the other girl and quickly busied herself with the kettle. She'd never seen Bonnie in her underwear before. It made her feel even weirder than kissing did. But still definitely not in a bad way.


End file.
